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Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate the 15-year deadline to prosecute rape in cases where there’s a DNA match. Current Massachusetts law bars rape prosecutions in older cases, even when DNA testing has identified a suspect. An investigation last year by WBUR and ProPublica found that nearly all other states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. Many of those 47 states extended their deadlines in recent decades as DNA technology helped solve old cases and as evidence mounted that police had failed to fully investigate rapes. The WBUR-ProPublica investigation followed the story of Louise, a woman who had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college, a police report said. Although DNA testing would later connect a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, prosecutors had to drop charges in her attack under Massachusetts’ statute. (WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission. We agreed to identify Louise by her middle name.) Healey’s proposal would eliminate the statute of limitations for rape cases when DNA evidence exists. “With technological advances, new evidence is being collected and tested every day, and we need to make sure our judicial system keeps pace,” Healey said in a written statement on Saturday. “I hope this proposal will help survivors who have had to wait far too long for justice, while also improving our ability to hold offenders accountable.” The new language is part of Healey’s budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year . The provision must pass both chambers of the Legislature. It would take effect for cases in which the statute of limitations has not yet expired and future sexual assaults, but it would not affect older cases. Legislators have tried to pass similar proposals every session since 2011, WBUR found, but those efforts have failed in part because defense attorneys have opposed changes, saying a longer deadline risks violating the rights of the accused. State Rep. Adam Scanlon, who has introduced legislation to create a DNA exception since 2021, said media attention helped push the issue forward again this year. He said Healey’s “bill is really a testament to victims to ensure that folks that are in the same situation never have to go through the process of seeing somebody being able to walk away from an alleged rape when they know — when we know as a society — that DNA evidence connects them to that crime.” That Healey, the state’s former attorney general, is backing the changes gives new hope for victims, said Louise, the woman featured by WBUR as part of its investigation. She was raped and repeatedly stabbed, a police report said. But DNA evidence did not match her assault to a suspect for 17 years. “ There are several of us that have missed out on having justice. We won’t get to have that day when we know that our perpetrators are not going to get us,” Louise said. Prosecutors alleged in 2022 that Louise’s attacker was a serial rapist. DNA from Ivan Cheung, a Boston-area man who worked in the financial services industry at the time of his arrest, also matched a 2006 stabbing and rape, court records show. But that attack was also beyond the state’s statute of limitations by the time the match was made. Cheung has repeatedly maintained his innocence. His attorney did not reply to WBUR’s requests for comment. Louise decided to advocate for survivors like her after Cheung’s prosecution failed. In June, she testified publicly before a state legislative committee in support of Scanlon’s bill. She said she’s glad that the governor heard the voices of her and other survivors. “I have beautiful family members, young women,” Louise said. “I care about all the youth in the community. I want them all safer.” The post Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists appeared first on ProPublica .

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a sharp warning that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” for airplanes, urging pilots to prepare for the possibility that “catastrophic failures” could create dangerous debris fields. The official notice , known as a safety alert for operators, was dated Jan. 8, the same day that ProPublica published an investigation showing how pilots scrambled to avoid debris after two SpaceX Starship megarockets exploded over busy airspace last year. The alert was an acknowledgment that travelers were at risk on those days, when the FAA hastily activated no-fly zones to help air traffic controllers steer planes away from falling rocket parts. In the last two decades, the agency has issued about 245 such safety alerts to the aviation community about issues ranging from runway threats to mechanical problems, but last month’s warning is the first to address the danger to airplanes when rockets launch or reenter Earth’s atmosphere, according to the FAA’s website . SpaceX and other companies have ramped up launches in recent years. Starship, a version of which is supposed to one day land on the moon, has followed a flight path that soars over well-trafficked commercial airways in the Caribbean. The FAA previously told ProPublica that it “limits the number of aircraft exposed to the hazards, making the likelihood of a catastrophic event extremely improbable.” It also said it takes steps to keep pilots informed and planes safe during launches, such as creating the emergency no-fly zones, known as debris response areas. The January alert also pointed to those procedures. “Past events have shown that when a mishap does occur, debris has fallen within or near the DRA, and pilots should exercise extreme caution near these areas,” the notice said. But it warned that debris can fall in places where the FAA doesn’t enact no-fly zones, such as international airspace over oceans without radar coverage, saying pilots need to have “additional situational awareness” to avoid debris fields there. Neither SpaceX nor the FAA has released data showing where debris fell after the Starship explosions last year. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, the company has said that it learns from its mistakes and that each test improves Starship’s reliability. “SpaceX is committed to responsibly using airspace during launches and reentries, prioritizing public safety to protect people on the ground, at sea, and in the air,” it said on X in December. Last year, the FAA granted SpaceX permission to launch Starship as many as 25 times a year from its base in Texas. But, after repeated setbacks, only five of the giant space vehicles lifted off in 2025. In its warning, the FAA urged aircraft operators to “evaluate the impact of space launch and reentry operations on their planned flight routes and take appropriate precautionary measures.” Those should include ensuring they have enough fuel in case air traffic controllers put them in a holding pattern, the agency said. In its investigation, ProPublica found several airplanes began running low on fuel after the January 2025 Starship incident, with at least one declaring an emergency and crossing the no-fly zone to reach an airport. The world’s largest pilots union told the FAA in October that such events call into question whether “a suitable process” is in place to respond to unexpected rocket mishaps. “There is high potential for debris striking an aircraft resulting in devastating loss of the aircraft, flight crew, and passengers,” wrote Steve Jangelis, a pilot and the group’s aviation safety chair. The FAA adjusted its practices over the course of the failed launches last year but still allowed SpaceX to launch more Starship prototypes over the same airspace, adding stress to the already-taxed air traffic control system, ProPublica found. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that an air traffic controller needed to intervene to prevent a collision when at least two aircraft flew too close to each other after one of the explosions. The FAA did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Airlines for America, a trade association for the leading U.S. airlines, said it is “committed to ensuring the safety of all flights especially amid the growing number of space launches.” The association said in a statement that airlines coordinate with both the federal government and commercial space companies to make sure the airspace stays safe. Rep. Nellie Pou of New Jersey, a Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation panel, applauded the FAA for issuing the warning, saying the Trump administration “must protect American travelers from all threats, including space launches and reentry operations.” “Perfect safety demands scrupulous and forward-looking attention to detail from our federal agencies and close coordination with operators,” Pou said. “I am heartened FAA is showing both here.” ProPublica’s Jan. 8 story showed how airplanes had to maneuver quickly to clear wide swaths of airspace after SpaceX Starships blew up over the Caribbean in January and March last year. Read More “We’re Too Close to the Debris” Our analysis of flight tracking data found that in each incident, multiple planes were in the projected debris zones at the time of the explosions and that others likely had to change course to steer clear of falling debris. Pilots reported seeing flaming streaks far above the horizon. Before the third Starship launch last year, in May, the agency settled on a more conservative approach, proactively closing more airspace ahead of time. That mission failed too, with the rocket’s booster exploding over the Gulf and its upper stage blowing up over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is now seeking FAA approval to add new trajectories as Starship strives to reach orbit. Under the plan, the rocket would fly over land in Florida and Mexico, as well as the airspace of Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, likely disrupting hundreds of flights. The company says it’s committed to public safety as it ramps up its launch cadence, saying in a post on X that it “will continue to ensure maximum public safety while also working to integrate Starship more efficiently into the airspace.” The post FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution” appeared first on ProPublica .

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations. Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city. CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good. Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for a transparent investigation into the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse working at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital. “We must have a transparent, independent investigation into the Minnesota shooting, and those responsible—no matter their title—must be held accountable,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah wrote on X on Monday. The agency sent a notice to some members of Congress on Tuesday acknowledging that two agents fired Glock pistols during the altercation that left Pretti dead. That notice does not include the agents’ names. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, said the agents had been placed on leave after the Jan. 24 shooting. And after a week of protests and calls from lawmakers for a review, the Justice Department said Friday that its Civil Rights Division is investigating the shooting. A DOJ spokesperson did not answer questions, including whether DHS has shared materials, such as body-camera footage, with its investigators. Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas. In the aftermath of the shooting, Gregory Bovino, who has orchestrated high-intensity immigration sweeps and arrests in a string of Democratic-led cities since early 2025, was removed from his role as Border Patrol commander at large and reassigned to his former post in El Centro, California. A spokesperson for DHS declined to answer questions about the two agents and referred ProPublica to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. ProPublica made several attempts to call Ochoa and Gutierrez but neither answered. Ochoa, who goes by Jesse, graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American with a degree in criminal justice, according to his ex-wife, Angelica Ochoa. A longtime resident of the Rio Grande Valley, Ochoa had for years dreamed of working for the Border Patrol and finally landed a job there, she said. By the time the couple split in 2021, he had become a gun enthusiast with about 25 rifles, pistols and shotguns, Angelica Ochoa said. DHS’ disclosure to Congress was drawn from an internal review of the agents’ body-camera footage, which has not been released to the public. State investigators, meanwhile, have accused their federal counterparts of blocking them from investigating the shooting. FBI agents work at the scene of the Pretti shooting. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica “We don’t have any information on the shooters,” a Minneapolis city spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Tuesday that his office also had “not been given the names, and we don’t have any new information on the investigation.” Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi Monday , accused the Justice Department of covering up evidence in both Pretti’s and Good’s killings. “DOJ has also blocked prosecutors and agents from cooperating with state law enforcement officials and prevented state officials from accessing evidence,” the letter said. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN on Sunday that immigration agents should not be masked. “They should not be anonymous. They should be identifiable. And they have to have rules of engagement that don’t allow them to terrorize and intimidate, harass and assault U.S. citizens and other people,” he said. The notice to Congress said that the shooting happened when Pretti resisted arrest after officers were unable to get him and a female protester out of the street. The CBP officer “attempted to move the woman and Pretti out of the roadway. The woman and Pretti did not move,” the report reads. “CBP personnel attempted to take Pretti into custody. Pretti resisted CBP personnel’s efforts and a struggle ensued.” According to the report, one agent then yelled “He’s got a gun!” multiple times, and two others “discharged” their Glock pistols. In videos widely shared online, Pretti can be seen holding up a phone, documenting the movements of federal agents and officers as they roamed the streets of a popular food and arts district. According to news reports, Pretti was concerned about the increasingly volatile siege of the city by federal agents. In the videos, a masked agent appears to knock a woman to the ground. Pretti comes to her aid, getting between them, at which point the officer deploys pepper spray at his face. Two agents then grab Pretti and pull him to the ground, while more federal personnel pile on. During the struggle, the agents unleash a series of shots — approximately 10 — as onlookers scream. Pretti was armed at the time of the encounter with a legally owned handgun, according to state and federal officials. Some analyses of bystander video appear to show a federal agent taking Pretti’s gun from his hip before the first shots were fired. The agents’ masks and the chaos of the altercation make it difficult to differentiate one from another. Those videos appear to contradict the claims by Bovino and other officials, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, that Pretti had come to attack agents. “The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted,” Bovino said in a Jan. 25 news conference. “Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.” In the initial aftermath, Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide and a leading force behind the immigration enforcement operations, called Pretti “a would-be assassin.” But Miller changed tack later in the week when he said in a statement that CBP officers “may not have been following” protocol related to confronting bystanders. Additional video has surfaced showing Pretti in another altercation with federal agents 11 days before he was killed. The video shows Pretti yelling at the agents, who get in an SUV and start to drive away. Pretti then kicks out the taillight of the vehicle and the agents, who wore protective masks, jump out and tackle him to the ground.  It is unclear if any of the same agents were involved in both incidents. Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said that many local and state police departments are “much more transparent” than CBP when officers shoot people. “More and more police departments are choosing to release bodycam footage or dashcam footage within a couple of days.” Gil Kerlikowske, a former CBP commissioner, told ProPublica that it’s difficult to draw conclusions from the chaos in bystander videos. Still, he said, the shooting might have been prevented. Pretti’s attempt to help the woman knocked to the ground could have been seen as interfering with federal law enforcement, he said. But the decision by the officers to immediately use pepper spray created a chaotic scene that likely contributed to Pretti’s death. “The other agent could have said ‘don’t interfere’ or ‘stand back,’” Kerlikowske said. “Rather than move immediately to pepper spray, you can arrest the person.” It’s part of a pattern, he said, of federal officers jumping straight to use of force in situations that could have been de-escalated but instead create danger for both agents and their targets. Pretti’s death, and the federal government’s characterization of the event, sparked immediate protests, spurring thousands of people to go out into frigid conditions in Minneapolis and other American cities. The shooting has also drawn intense criticism from political leaders, including Walz, who has promised his state’s law enforcement will conduct its own criminal investigation. People gather at the location where Pretti was shot. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica The post Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting appeared first on ProPublica .

Over the past month, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. On Saturday, Jan. 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Pretti was the third person shot by federal agents in the area in January.  The Department of Homeland Security initially said an agent fired “defensive shots” after Pretti approached officers with a weapon, but video of the incident appears to contradict that claim. DHS said this week that two officers involved were placed on leave. In a press conference on Thursday , border czar Tom Homan said the administration is working on making the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book.” He said that agents will focus on “targeted, strategic enforcement operations” with a “prioritization on public safety threats.” Our photojournalists Cengiz Yar and Peter DiCampo were on the ground in Minneapolis, covering what they saw in the days before and after Pretti’s death. Read their accounts below.  Cengiz Yar I arrived in Minneapolis last week to report on the crackdown and how local residents were reacting. I had packed my medical kit, full face respirator, helmet and a couple tourniquets, essentials for my reporting bag when I make trips to dangerous and potentially violent areas. I also brought layers upon layers of warm clothing, as temperatures were expected to drop to 20 below in the coming days. I knew the ICE raids and the community’s response had been intense across the region, but I wasn’t fully prepared for what I’d end up seeing playing out in the streets.  In my few days in Minnesota, I’ve been witness to countless scenes that remind me of moments I’ve seen during previous trips covering conflicts around the world. I watched heavily armored federal units roll through quiet neighborhoods. In a grocery store parking lot, angry residents screamed at agents, demanding they leave the city. Masked and armed government agents pointed weapons toward me and some protesters during an encounter in the middle of the afternoon. Curious guests in a hotel elevator wondered why I was carrying around a medical pack and gas mask. Local residents thanked me for being there to witness the situation. A drunk man at a hotel bar cursed at me, saying the media was at fault. The wars we’ve carried out as a nation abroad have come home.  On my first day out reporting, I came upon an incident that had been unfolding for over an hour. Late in the afternoon on Thursday, Jan. 22, three construction workers clung to a roof, bracing themselves against the slanted plywood of an unfinished two-story house on the far south side of Minneapolis. Federal agents had massed in the house and in cars on the street, conducting a raid on the construction site. The agents called for the workers to come down. They refused. They stayed on the roof, exposed to the elements in negative 4 degree weather. Federal agents leave a construction site after trying to apprehend three individuals on the roof. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica I stood outside the house looking up at the men on the roof, wondering how they were surviving in only high-visibility vests and work clothing. Onlookers begged the agents to let them bring the men blankets. They were told to stay out of the building.  Other construction workers milled about the snow-covered site as their co-workers hung on above. Some cursed at the officers. One worker told the men to come down before they freeze to death. “You can at least go to a warm cell,” he shouted. One young, white worker stuck his middle finger in the face of agents idling in their car. “Fuck you,” he screamed as he stomped around the site. A half dozen onlookers had assembled as well, shouting encouragement to the men above and asking the agents for compassion. The three men remained on the roof as the young, white construction worker argued angrily with the agents for almost an hour. Finally, as the time approached 5 p.m., the agents left. Workers rush up stairs to bring blankets to their co-workers after federal agents abandoned their attempted apprehension. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica Onlookers rushed into the building and brought the men down to wrap them in blankets. “You’re OK now,” they reassured the men. “You did great.”  On Friday, I arrived in South Minneapolis as protesters gathered, shouting, filming and blowing whistles at armored agents in a pickup. After a few minutes, the agents threw tear gas into the small crowd of onlookers and sped away. Gas drifted through the snowy streets, passing cute two-story houses and short, leafless trees. My throat burning, I crouched to the ground, coughing up the irritants behind a snowbank.  I couldn’t have known that less than a day later, in a similar situation, Customs and Border Protection agents would kill a man by shooting him multiple times in the back as they pinned him to the ground. Pretti died while filming agents and trying to help a woman as he was pepper sprayed. In the unfolding chaos in the hours after the shooting, I watched as agents unloaded tear gas on a couple hundred furious protesters who had assembled at the site of the shooting. Heavily armored law enforcement faced off against a crowd of unarmed protesters carrying signs and screaming for justice and retribution. Federal agents threw tear gas into a crowd of protesters in a South Minneapolis neighborhood. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica Peter DiCampo It was 9:07 a.m. on Saturday morning when I learned that someone had been shot outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue. It would be hours before I heard the name Alex Pretti and watched the grisly videos of CBP agents shooting him to death. But knowing that Minneapolis was on edge following the death of Renee Good, also killed by federal agents, I grabbed my camera and the warmest clothing I could find. I rushed out of my house. By 9:29 a.m., I was in my car texting a group of fellow photographers “omw.” Yellow police tape and federal agents lined the scene of the shooting, keeping everyone about a block away in every direction. A small crowd gathered. The first person I recognized wasn’t another journalist, it was my neighbor. “Peter!” she cried, and told me she wasn’t sure what was happening, just that she had also heard about the shooting and wanted to get down there. She sobbed into my arms for a minute, then we parted ways. More agents gathered. Many wore gas masks. More residents and others ready to protest another killing arrived. A young man stood at the edge of the yellow tape and yelled; an older woman hugged him to try to calm him down. The anger of the crowd was palpable. “ICE agents: Get out of Minneapolis,” they screamed. Kristin Heiberg hugs a young man who had been screaming at federal agents. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica Protesters in a standoff with federal agents a block south of where Alex Pretti was killed Peter DiCampo/ProPublica I do not have the words to articulate how it feels to watch this unfold in Minneapolis, a city that I have grown to know and love after moving here a few years ago. The journalists who flocked here over the past few weeks are people I have run into while on assignment in hot spots all over the world. Now they were in my home city. As crowds grew, agents fired tear gas to keep them back. Crowds would then briefly disperse, but some agents would grab and detain people regardless. The crowds reformed quickly, and the cycle of tear gas, detentions and regrouping continued. Federal agents detain a protester after tear gassing the crowd Peter DiCampo/ProPublica After one bout of tear gas, I stumbled away, doubled over and coughing. “Come inside!” I heard someone yell. I looked up and saw a woman opening the door to an apartment building. She wasn’t yelling to me but to two photographers I know. I stumbled toward them, and the three of them saw me, and all extended the invitation: “Come inside!” I was grateful to be out of the tear gas, and I was grateful to be warm. That day’s high temperature was well below zero; at one point, I looked down and realized frozen condensation had iced my camera dials and buttons in place. The other two photographers and I made our way to the rooftop and spent the next hour-plus photographing from above. We overlooked the scene of the shooting and could see the FBI examining it and the line of protesters and agents going back and forth in three different directions. For more than two hours, protesters pushed north on Nicollet Avenue toward the site of the Pretti shooting, dispersing when federal agents fired tear gas on them only to then regroup. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica We watched as the federal presence finished at the shooting scene and packed up. They slowly backed out, firing tear gas at protesters who ran at them as they drove away. We went back down to the street. Protesters gathered at the next block, and a similar scene played out there, this time with city and state police. “Why aren’t you protecting us?” one person yelled at them. Another protestor tried to calm the crowd down, but people were fed up: “Fuck your pacifism,” I heard someone yell. Tear gas was fired, people dispersed and the police slowly backed out. Eventually, without federal agents and police around, the mood shifted from chaos to something more somber. A lone protester stands amid tear gas in front of Cheapo Records on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, a few doors down from where Alex Pretti was killed. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica Protesters rally near where Pretti was killed shortly after law enforcement withdrew from the scene. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica As I took a moment to breathe, I realized that the final standoff had taken place right in front of Cheapo Records, where I went record shopping on my birthday a couple years back. And the events of the entire day — the shooting, the protests, the tear gassing — all unfolded on a stretch of Nicollet Avenue called Eat Street, known for having many of the best restaurants in town, with cuisines from all over the world that showcase the city’s diversity. I knew then that walking these streets would never feel the same. People made their way to the site of Alex Pretti’s death. There was still yellow tape around it, now tied haphazardly around trash cans. A small bloodstain was visible on the pavement. Quietly, they began to build a memorial. Mourners gather and add to a memorial for Alex Pretti. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica The post What We Saw in Minneapolis appeared first on ProPublica .

Through boom times and, more recently, slumping sales, Nike Inc. has stuck by a key claim about its overseas suppliers: They pay the average factory worker about twice the local minimum wage. It’s a claim company co-founder Phil Knight first made in the 1990s, when the company faced accusations of sweatshop conditions in the overseas factories hired to make Nike’s apparel. And it’s one the sneaker giant has reasserted since 2021. But the experiences of workers in Indonesia, Nike’s second-largest production hub, illustrate how misleading the claim can be for vast portions of its supply chain. When a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive visited the country and interviewed roughly 100 workers from more than 10 factories that supply Nike, none said they made anywhere near twice the minimum wage. “Bullshit,” a union official said, in English, while sitting on a makeshift couch on the porch of his office near Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. (Like most workers currently employed by Nike suppliers, the official did not wish to be named because of fears of retaliation, including fines and termination.) One worker from a factory in West Java asked a reporter where on the company’s website Nike makes the wage claim. “No, no, no,” he said, through a translator. “It’s not true.” “Nike is not paying double the minimum wage,” said a union official in Central Java, a lower-wage area where Nike’s contract factories have been expanding. “The fact is the opposite. Nike is seeking cheaper workers.” Worker housing near an Indonesian factory that makes Nike products Matthew Kish/The Oregonian/OregonLive. License plates redacted by ProPublica. Last year, a ProPublica reporter visited Cambodia and found that only 1% of the 3,720 workers at a former Nike supplier earned at least 1.9 times the minimum wage, based on a factory payroll ledger. Interviews and paystubs for other workers corroborated that earnings are typically closer to the minimum wage than double that amount. A reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive subsequently spent seven days in Indonesia, where Nike’s contractors, including its materials suppliers, employ about 280,000 people. All the workers interviewed said they made around minimum wage, which is as little as $150 a month in some parts of the country. Sandra Cho, who oversees human rights for Nike, didn’t dispute that some factory workers — including in Indonesia and Cambodia — make less than 1.9 times the minimum wage, describing the figure as a “global average.” “Some countries will be less than 1.9, some countries will be higher,” she said. In Vietnam, Nike’s biggest production center, two workers told The Oregonian/OregonLive they made minimum wage — about $204 a month — but two said they made twice as much. That’s in keeping with reports from Nike’s competitor, Puma, which says its biggest factories in Vietnam pay around double the minimum wage. Nike pushed back when asked whether it’s misleading for its disclosures to highlight the figure of 1.9 times the minimum wage. “A company trying to mislead would not voluntarily publish wage data, openly acknowledge its journey toward improvement, or subject itself to third-party scrutiny,” Nike said in a written statement. But the transparency that Nike provides is limited. The company’s global pay figure is based on data for 700,000 of its roughly 1.2 million workers in its nearly 700 contract factories. In other words, nearly half a million workers are omitted from the math. Nike doesn’t disclose which factories, or which workers, are left out. It’s said that the data covers its biggest partners, which account for an outsize share of production. (A Nike spokesperson said the wages of the roughly 500,000 workers not included in the calculation are audited to ensure they make at least the minimum wage.) Nike competitors Adidas and Puma similarly produce wage estimates for only a subset of their suppliers, but they have published data down to the country level in recent years. Adidas reports wage variations within countries. Advocates say the data helps workers determine whether they’re paid fairly and push for pay increases if they are not. Nike said focusing solely on pay relative to the minimum wage is a mistake. The company’s main focus with wages is whether they’re high enough to cover basic expenses and a little more, Cho said, a concept known as a living wage. Some countries have minimum wages that meet that threshold, some don’t. Nike has said 66% of workers at its suppliers, at least those for whom it has data, earn a living wage. That’s up from 53% in 2021. But living-wage calculations can vary widely, and they don’t always match the perceptions of people on the ground. Workers interviewed near Jakarta, where the local minimum pay rate is ostensibly more than a living wage, said it’s not enough to live on. A Nike contract worker near Jakarta sells cosmetics as a second job. Matthew Kish/The Oregonian/OregonLive One said she wakes up seven days a week, before the sun rises, to set up a small shop in front of her home. She sells groceries, gas canisters for cooking, water, cigarettes and snacks, mostly to housewives buying daily necessities. She opens the store around 6 a.m. A half hour later, on weekdays, she leaves for her job at the factory. Over the next eight hours, while her husband minds the shop, she works standing up, often in sweltering conditions, cutting fabric for 1,600 pairs of Nike sneakers — one every 18 seconds. She returns to her small apartment around 6:30 p.m., eats a quick dinner of instant noodles, then goes back to the shop until 10 p.m. She earns around $300 a month from making sneakers, just about minimum wage. The store brings in another $60. “I always come home late, sometimes in the heat and rain,” she said through a translator, “but I still endure it to meet me and my child’s needs.” A History of Dueling Numbers Nike’s beginnings were rooted in the low labor costs that overseas manufacturing could offer. In 1962, while working toward a master’s degree in business administration at Stanford University, Knight wrote an academic paper that became the company’s basic business plan. A core pillar: the disruptive power of cheap labor. “Low Japanese labor costs make it possible for an exciting new firm to offer these shoes at the low low price of $6.95,” Knight wrote in 1964 in his first ad, according to his 2016 memoir, “Shoe Dog.” In his book, he also wrote about the crushing poverty he saw on an around-the-world trip as a 24-year-old. Knight, who did not respond to detailed questions for this article, wrote in the book that hiring low-wage workers in developing countries would spur economic development. The first decades of Nike’s history backed up his belief. As the economy bloomed in Japan and wages rose, Nike shifted production from Japan to Korea and Taiwan and, later, Indonesia and Vietnam. “Thirty years ago, Nike shared that responsible participation in global manufacturing could accelerate economic development in emerging economies,” Nike said in its statement. “History has largely validated that.” When Nike arrived in Indonesia in 1988, the country offered an enticing economic carrot to companies hunting for overseas factories: a minimum wage around $1 a day in Jakarta, compared with $8 in South Korea, $14 in Taiwan and $33 in Tokyo, according to a 1988 U.S. State Department report. But Indonesia also presented new problems. The country was a target of activists because of its history of human rights abuses . As companies ramped up production there, anti-sweatshop protests and negative press accounts multiplied, with some noting the country’s minimum wage was so low that many factory workers were malnourished. Numerous stories took aim at Nike, whose soaring success, coupled with its popular athletic endorsers and corporate aloofness, made it a rich target. The early coverage included a memorable 1992 story in Harper’s Magazine that showed the paycheck of an Indonesian factory worker who made $1.03 a day at the time and concluded she’d need to work more than 44,000 years to match Nike endorser Michael Jordan’s annual Nike income. Knight and Nike pushed back on the criticism. Where Knight once sang the praises of low wages, he and the company now boasted the company’s suppliers paid generously. In 1996, Nike distributed a fact sheet that said the median wage in its Indonesian factories was $108.65 a month, or more than double the minimum wage. In June of that year, Knight wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times saying Nike “has paid, on average, double the minimum wage” to factory workers. A month later, he told CNN Nike paid “over two times” the minimum wage in Indonesia. He told shareholders in 1996 that pay was “double the minimum wage throughout Indonesia.” Nike co-founder Phil Knight in March 1995. In the 1960s, Knight wrote about how low-wage labor could help Nike disrupt the shoe industry. Three decades later, he boasted that the company’s Indonesian factories paid double the minimum wage. Najlah Feanny/Corbis via Getty Images The Associated Press , The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and the editorial board of The Oregonian, the biggest newspaper in Nike’s home state, all repeated the claim. But The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica could find no contemporaneous data that supported Nike’s assertion. Neither could Nike. “Those statements were made nearly 30 years ago, based on the data and understanding available at the time, and reflected a broader belief that responsible participation in global trade could raise incomes and expand opportunity in emerging economies,” Nike said in its 2026 statement. “Like most companies, we do not retain granular factory-level payroll data from partners in the mid-1990s.” The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found plenty to challenge the claim, including statements by the company itself. In fact, between 1994 and 2001, four reports issued directly by Nike, done at the company’s request or compiled by the U.S. government never put the average wage in Indonesia higher than 37% above the minimum. When asked to address the contradictory numbers from the 1990s, Nike said via email: “What’s relevant today is how Nike operates now, including the rigor of our current disclosures, the progress we’ve made, and the work still ahead to advance wages and opportunity across our supply chain.” The accuracy of Nike’s past wage claims didn’t go unchallenged. In 1998, California labor activist Marc Kasky sued Nike, alleging several claims about its overseas factories were “deceitful” and false advertising. He submitted a pile of Nike statements as evidence, including Knight’s letter to the editor of The New York Times. Nike said in a court filing, without admitting any of its statements were inaccurate, that those statements were not subject to a court’s opinion about their veracity. The company’s words were protected by the First Amendment, Nike wrote, because they were intended not to sell Nike products but to answer Nike’s critics concerning “issues of public interest.” Nike settled the lawsuit in 2003, for $1.5 million, without admitting fault. The money was earmarked for factory monitoring and programs for workers, including economic ones. Taking on Second Jobs Motorcycles fill Indonesia’s roads during a rush-hour commute to sneaker factories. Adi Renaldi for The Oregonian/OregonLive Since the Kasky settlement, Nike has published nearly 2,000 pages of reports on its work to become a better corporate citizen. The closest it came to shedding new light on wages was in 2021, when the company reported on new efforts to understand what factory workers earn. The 184-page report said that workers had “average gross pay of 1.9 times the minimum wage” — almost identical to the assertion the company made back in the ’90s. The company said it based the claim on information from 103 “strategic suppliers” in 13 countries that employed over 700,000 workers. The report did not identify the suppliers or disclose the wages paid to workers. Nike reiterates the claim in a disclosure currently posted on its website , which has been updated with 2022 data. It’s now based on data from 111 factories. Workers in Indonesia reported wide deviations from the company’s stated average pay for the supply chain as a whole. The workers’ accounts of earning minimum wage or a little bit more are consistent with 63 paystubs from three Indonesian factories, which The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica obtained from a labor group. At two factories, workers averaged 1.1 times the minimum wage. At the other factory, workers averaged 1.4 times the minimum. Those numbers align with disclosures of Adidas and Puma, which have released more information about factory wages than Nike. In its 2024 annual report , Adidas said nearly 100,000 of its factory workers in Indonesia made between 1.1 and 1.4 times the minimum wage. Data from Puma’s 2024 sustainability report indicated that workers at four Indonesian suppliers averaged $208 in monthly wages, 17% above the average minimum wage where the factories were located. Presented with detailed questions about pay practices, Nike said looking at pay relative to the minimum in isolation “misses the broader picture of real wage growth and economic development” in countries where Nike sources its goods. In Vietnam, Nike’s contract factories account for 2.5% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to a 2019 diplomatic cable obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We’re proud of the role Nike and our industry have played in building employment, skills, and opportunity in many countries, including Vietnam today, where the industry contributes meaningfully to national GDP,” the company said, adding that it remained “committed to pushing for continued improvement.” Nike’s Cho said the company’s work to lift wages includes a program that’s helped female workers advance into higher-paid positions. Roughly 80% of factory employees are women, Cho said, but men are 2.5 times more likely to get promoted off the manufacturing line. She said 21% of participants in the program got a promotion within three months. The company said what matters more than what people are paid relative to the minimum wage is whether they make enough to cover basic expenses. Some regions of Indonesia, including Jakarta, have minimum wages higher than local living wage estimates by the WageIndicator Foundation, an independent Dutch nonprofit. The living wage “is where we focus our energy and work,” said Nike’s Cho. But an income that meets the living wage benchmark on paper doesn’t always match what workers say they need, at least in Indonesia. Inside a Nike factory worker’s home. Workers in Indonesia say they earn far less than what Nike says is the average among suppliers for which it has sufficient data. Adi Renaldi for The Oregonian/OregonLive Standing in an overgrown lot outside Jakarta, 30 workers broke into laughter when asked if they got paid enough to cover their basic expenses. One said factory wages weren’t enough to pay for new uniforms, books and shoes for school-aged children. Another worker estimated as much as 70% of her coworkers had second jobs, a comment that drew approving nods. That work includes operating motorbike taxis, fish farming, collecting scrap metal and cleaning fruit, workers said. Some workers sell goods inside the factory, including coffee, snacks and cosmetics, which they said comes with the risk of disciplinary action, including termination. Knight once told documentary filmmaker Michael Moore that factory jobs were such a road to upward mobility that someone working in an Indonesian factory making Nike goods might someday be Moore’s landlord. Two workers who invited a reporter into their homes in a neighborhood near Jakarta last summer were not landlords. Read More She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad. They lived in 150-square-foot barracks-style apartments with almost no furniture except for thin mattresses, which had been propped against the wall to create living space. Small electric fans cooled the apartments, which cost around $30 a month to rent. Workers largely agreed Nike contract factories are preferable to local alternatives. Nike factories are clean and pay on time, they said. Many have exhaust fans that can provide some relief from the tropical heat. Forced overtime is no longer a problem. Government regulations tend to be followed. But the workers said wages remain chronically low, describing the typical pay as only enough to support one person. “It’s as if the company wants us to stay single forever,” a worker near Jakarta said. Another worker said she started stitching Nike sneakers 25 years ago, about the time Knight spoke to Moore about workers becoming landlords. She said after all those years, she makes $300 a month — roughly the local minimum wage. The post Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.” appeared first on ProPublica .

Once a month, American labor activist Jim Keady logs into Remitly, an app for transferring money abroad, at his New Jersey home and sends $100 to a former Nike factory worker in Indonesia. Cicih Sukaesih helped bring the world’s attention to the lives of the young women in poor countries who made sneakers in the 1990s, first by organizing a strike and later by marching onto Nike’s bucolic corporate campus in Oregon to demand a meeting with co-founder Phil Knight. Her story — at a time of police and military harassment of labor organizers abroad — caught the attention of The New York Times and other news organizations. It also helped inform a generation of workers about their rights. “She helped to birth, I would argue, the Indonesian trade union movement within Nike’s supplier factories,” Keady said. Cicih during a visit to the United States to campaign for improvements in the labor practices of Nike suppliers. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica But media attention and accolades don’t pay the bills. Cicih had trouble finding work following her 1990s activism. (Cicih prefers to go by one name. It’s pronounced “Chee Chee.”) Decades after her crusade faded from the headlines, Keady and other labor organizers began sending Cicih money to keep her afloat. “She took a stand and she was a revolutionary,” Keady said. “And she has nothing to show for it.” Read More Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.” Now 62, Cicih welcomed a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive into her home last year, part of a reporting trip that included interviews with about 100 workers who make Nike sneakers, mostly in Indonesia, which was ground zero for the decade of sweatshop criticism that stained Nike’s reputation in the 1990s. Cicih said she’s proud of the example she set by standing up to Nike. She said workers “became aware of their rights and aware of the law.” “Many things changed,” she said. The advocacy led to improvements, she said, including cracking down on child labor, installing better safety equipment and providing menstrual leave. “Many of my friends,” Cicih said, “became brave enough to speak up.” Cicih feeds her three cats at home. Now 62, she struggles to get by. She lives with her sister at a home they inherited from their parents. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica But she described her work as incomplete because problems linger, including chronically low wages. Nike did not address specific questions about Cicih’s experience or about the Nike supplier that employed her in the 1990s, nor did Knight provide comment. Instead, Nike issued a broad statement saying, in part, “We’re appreciative of the efforts that individuals and organizations, including Cicih, have made in helping push the industry forward.” Nike said the company has been “deeply committed to advancing a responsible and resilient supply chain for more than 30 years” and that while progress hasn’t been perfect, it has sought “systemic improvements across the industry.” Nike’s goal, the statement said, is that “all people involved in the manufacturing of Nike’s products are respected, valued, and treated fairly.” Cicih keeps tokens of her activism in her home, including a framed poster that depicts a factory worker and reads, “Who made your shoes?” Jeff Ballinger, a labor organizer who was prominent in the 1990s’ anti-sweatshop movement, gave it to her. In an interview, Ballinger said he still considers Cicih a “hero” — albeit unsung, even in Tangerang, the industrial hub where the Indonesian factory movement took off. “Like in wartime, some people just step up,” Ballinger said. “In a perfect world, there’d be a statue of her in Tangerang.” $1.26 a Day Cicih sat for an interview in a backyard filled by a chicken coop and a small garden that included pumpkins, bananas and edible bamboo. The small house she and one of her sisters inherited from their parents in Menes, her childhood village about a 90-mile drive west of Jakarta, is now home. After putting out snacks that included a traditional Indonesian dessert made from rice and grated coconut in banana leaves, Cicih often flashed a wide grin as she reflected on a life intertwined with Nike’s emergence in her country. Cicih grows coconuts, bananas, tomatoes, pumpkins and bamboo in her family’s garden, in addition to raising chickens. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Nike, then known as Blue Ribbon Sports, bought its first sneakers from Japanese factories in the 1960s. But as Japan’s wages rose, it shifted manufacturing to lower-cost Asian countries, including Taiwan and South Korea. In 1988, it started making sneakers in Indonesia. The country had a terrible human rights record, but it was eager to attract foreign investors. Factories in Jakarta paid wages as low as $1 a day, compared with $8 in South Korea, $14 in Taiwan and $33 in Tokyo, according to a 1988 State Department report. In 1989, five years after she graduated from high school, Cicih joined one of her sisters making Nike sneakers at the Sung Hwa Dunia factory 40 miles west of Jakarta, Indonesia’s biggest city. She started work each day at 7 a.m. At first, she said, she cleaned glue and chemicals off sneakers with her bare hands. Then she moved to a glue line, attaching soles to shoes. The factory was poorly ventilated. Co-workers coughed from the fumes. Cicih recalled seeing one person faint and then return to the assembly line because factory managers didn’t give her permission to go home. (The factory is still open, but it has changed owners and now has a different name. The current owner did not respond to emails. The previous owner could not be reached.) The factory formerly called Sung Hwa Dunia in Indonesia has changed hands since Cicih worked there. It is currently listed for sale. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Worker safety was “very, very bad,” Cicih said through an independent journalist The Oregonian/OregonLive hired to translate the conversation. “There were many, many labor laws that the company did not follow,” she added. Like today, the vast majority of factory workers were young women. Most of the managers were older men, which Cicih said led to a natural power imbalance and problems with sexual harassment. “I have watched and seen a lot of women being sexually abused, or touched inappropriately,” she said. There was constant pressure to meet daily production quotas. Cicih made $1.26 a day, around minimum wage. A 1989 study found the minimum wage was so low that many factory workers were malnourished. “It was not enough for me to get by on a daily basis,” she said. “However, I had to make it on the amount I received.” Cicih often worked overtime until 9 p.m. Sometimes she worked on Saturday and Sunday, which she considered forced labor. The amount of overtime, she said, motivated her to “rebel.” Cicih worked at a Nike supplier in Serang, Indonesia. She says the factory broke “many, many labor laws.” Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica “A Wage Increase Was the Top Priority”  The turning point for Cicih came when one of the company’s buses, which workers rode to the factory and were always overcrowded, flipped and killed a co-worker. “How can we protest this issue to the company?” she asked another co-worker. Unbeknownst to Cicih, this co-worker had joined an organization that taught workers about labor rights. Cicih faked a doctor’s letter, got a sick day and took a class. Through the organization, she met Ballinger, who had moved to Indonesia to organize factory workers. In 1992, Ballinger wrote a story for Harper’s Magazine that compared the wages of Sadisah, one of Cicih’s co-workers, to the earnings of Nike endorser Michael Jordan. Sadisah earned 14 cents an hour. It would have taken her more than 44,000 years to make what Jordan earned from Nike in a single year. Cicih started skipping lunch and prayer breaks to organize her co-workers. On Sept. 28, 1992, Cicih and workers from her factory went on strike. The New York Times reported 600 walked out, but Cicih and other activists have put the number of strikers in the thousands. They demanded better treatment of women, better union representation, better food, better transportation and, most importantly, better pay. “A wage increase was the top priority,” she said, holding up the original document that listed protesters’ demands. Cicih and her friends gathered before a labor rights training course. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica In 1992, Cicih photographed her fellow workers meeting about going on strike. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Her activism came with great risks. Around that time, Marsinah, a factory worker who was recognized last year as the country’s first National Hero from the labor movement, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered . “Military and police were everywhere,” Cicih said, but she said her desire to help her co-workers “eclipsed all the fear.” The strike lasted two days. It ended after the factory agreed to increase wages for many employees, Cicih said, but she added that her seniority made her eligible for just a small raise. The company accepted other demands, including allowing menstrual leave. Cicih said she was the first worker to take it. That same year that Cicih led the strike, Nike released a code of conduct, becoming one of the first brands to do so. Codes of conduct have since become the default method companies like Nike use to police overseas factories. The basic system: The company writes rules and contract factories agree to follow them. Auditors monitor compliance. A few months after the strike, Cicih and roughly two dozen of her co-workers got laid off. Leslie Milano, a prominent American labor organizer in the early 2000s, said unemployment at the time was high in Indonesia. “That’s why a lot of people didn’t want to do what Cicih did,” Milano said. “They didn’t want to lose their jobs.” Thirty-plus years after she began her organizing work, Cicih struggles to make ends meet. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Cicih said that not long after being laid off, she was hauled into a police station and spent two days being pressured to confess to destruction of property and causing a disturbance. She was not allowed to go to the bathroom, she said. Cicih said the police made her watch them beat a suspect. Then they made her sit in his blood, she said, before releasing her. The Indonesian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to questions about military repression of worker rights in the 1990s. (The country undertook democratic reform after the dictator Suharto stepped down in 1998, although problems remain.) After her release, encouraged by Ballinger and others, she joined co-workers in filing a lawsuit against the factory alleging wrongful termination. The lawsuit went all the way to Indonesia’s Supreme Court. In 1996, Cicih and her co-workers prevailed. She got about $200 in back wages. She still has the check in a binder with other documents from her organizing days. For two years of lost wages, Ballinger figures Cicih should have gotten more than $2,000. That would have been enough to set up a small business. “It would have been a hell of a lot of money back then,” he said. The movement’s failure to deliver greater restitution to Cicih and others “is something that I’ll never get over.” Cicih Comes to Oregon  Around the time the lawsuit concluded, in July 1996, Cicih walked onto Nike’s suburban campus near Beaverton, Oregon, and demanded a meeting with the company’s co-founder. “I’m here to meet with Phil Knight,” she said, according to The Oregonian’s coverage of her visit. “I want to ask him to consider the plight of Indonesian workers.” Cicih had stayed in touch with Ballinger. He helped bring her to the United States to put pressure on Nike, one of four such visits she made to the country. Knight refused to see her. Cicih tried to meet with Nike’s Phil Knight when she visited Oregon in 1996. As part of the trip, she also held a press conference in front of the company’s downtown Portland store. Kathryn Scott/The Oregonian/OregonLive A week before Cicih arrived in Beaverton, Knight wrote a letter to her trip’s organizers, saying he was “sympathetic” to her case but preferred to meet with people “interested in constructive, proactive solutions, not those who announce their intentions through news conferences and mean-spirited media campaigns.” He defended Nike’s response to problems at Cicih’s factory, saying Nike had worked to correct them. “The factory where Ms. Sukaesih worked has been under new Indonesian management for two years, the grievances have been addressed and the minimum wage is in force,” Knight wrote. “In our view, this is an example of the benefit Nike brings in upgrading labor practices in emerging market societies.” Cicih keeps many of the documents from her labor organizing days in a three-ring binder. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica After she made her request to meet with Knight, a “trio of beefy Nike security guards” escorted Cicih off Nike’s campus and local sheriff’s deputies asked her to leave the premises, according to The Oregonian’s coverage. Roughly a week later, Knight sat across the table from President Bill Clinton at the White House to talk about labor reforms, according to records obtained from the Clinton Presidential Library. Knight then stood in the Rose Garden behind Clinton as the president announced a sweeping effort to address sweatshop conditions in overseas factories. “While I think that we have been good citizens within our industry, I think there’s clearly a lot more that we can do, that we can indeed be better,” Knight said in his brief remarks. The meeting with Clinton led to the creation of the Fair Labor Association, one of several groups that monitor factory working conditions. Knight publicly committed to specific sweatshop reforms in a 1998 speech at the National Press Club . Knight announced six changes, including heightened indoor air quality standards, increased factory monitoring and raising the minimum age in footwear factories to 18. He didn’t say anything about raising wages. “You Have to Fight” These days, Nike factory workers in Indonesia told The Oregonian/OregonLive, the kind of forced overtime that sparked Cicih’s desire to “rebel” is nonexistent. They also said Nike lived up to Knight’s commitment to get underage workers out of Indonesian factories. But they said problems remain. In interviews, they criticized the auditing process, the linchpin of the factory monitoring system that Nike helped pioneer. Workers said factories know in advance when auditors will arrive. At one factory, workers said safety equipment had been distributed on the eve of an audit. “The best time to work at a Nike factory is when it’s being audited,” a worker said. Workers said more rigorous and consistent auditing would catch problems with safety and sexual harassment, which they said remain persistent. Asked about the workers’ description of factories prepping for planned audits, Nike said that it conducts unannounced audits in addition to those that are scheduled in advance, and that these are supplemented by “worker engagement and well-being surveys,” among other efforts. “When issues are brought to our attention, through any mechanism, we work with suppliers to validate, identify root causes and implement comprehensive remediation processes,” Nike said.  Nike’s most recent disclosures say 87% of the 623 suppliers it audited in fiscal year 2024 at least met the company’s basic code of conduct requirements. The company also disclosed a factory injury rate significantly below its peers. Less than 1% of code of conduct violations related to harassment and abuse, according to the disclosure. Workers and union leaders also say their No. 1 concern — low wages — has not been addressed. Many said they work second jobs to make ends meet. “One job isn’t enough,” Keady said. “They’re not getting a second job because they want to send their kid to a really good private school or they want to buy a home in a great neighborhood. They’re getting a second job because they can’t afford three meals a day for their family.” Cicih also has struggled. After her lawsuit against the factory that once employed her, she had the option to return, but she declined. She thought the environment would be uncomfortable because of her history as an organizer. She did some volunteer work as a labor organizer. Some other organizers encouraged her to set up a small business. Those efforts never panned out. She moved back to her hometown of Menes in 2018. A sister on whom Cicih depended financially died during the pandemic. Cicih opened a roadside food stall and sold vegetable salad and gado gado, a type of Indonesian dish, but it didn’t go well. She gets by on donations from American do-gooders, including Keady. She grows some of her own food. She doesn’t have a pension or savings. “Nothing,” she said. But she’s resolute. “You have to do this,” she said, reflecting on her years as an activist. “You have to fight.” Cicih at home. Despite the struggles she faced in her labor activism, she still believes in fighting for workers’ rights. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica The post She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad. appeared first on ProPublica .

Once a month, American labor activist Jim Keady logs into Remitly, an app for transferring money abroad, at his New Jersey home and sends $100 to a former Nike factory worker in Indonesia. Cicih Sukaesih helped bring the world’s attention to the lives of the young women in poor countries who made sneakers in the 1990s, first by organizing a strike and later by marching onto Nike’s bucolic corporate campus in Oregon to demand a meeting with co-founder Phil Knight. Her story — at a time of police and military harassment of labor organizers abroad — caught the attention of The New York Times and other news organizations. It also helped inform a generation of workers about their rights. “She helped to birth, I would argue, the Indonesian trade union movement within Nike’s supplier factories,” Keady said. Cicih during a visit to the United States to campaign for improvements in the labor practices of Nike suppliers. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica But media attention and accolades don’t pay the bills. Cicih had trouble finding work following her 1990s activism. (Cicih prefers to go by one name. It’s pronounced “Chee Chee.”) Decades after her crusade faded from the headlines, Keady and other labor organizers began sending Cicih money to keep her afloat. “She took a stand and she was a revolutionary,” Keady said. “And she has nothing to show for it.” Read More Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.” Now 62, Cicih welcomed a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive into her home last year, part of a reporting trip that included interviews with about 100 workers who make Nike sneakers, mostly in Indonesia, which was ground zero for the decade of sweatshop criticism that stained Nike’s reputation in the 1990s. Cicih said she’s proud of the example she set by standing up to Nike. She said workers “became aware of their rights and aware of the law.” “Many things changed,” she said. The advocacy led to improvements, she said, including cracking down on child labor, installing better safety equipment and providing menstrual leave. “Many of my friends,” Cicih said, “became brave enough to speak up.” Cicih feeds her three cats at home. Now 62, she struggles to get by. She lives with her sister at a home they inherited from their parents. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica But she described her work as incomplete because problems linger, including chronically low wages. Nike did not address specific questions about Cicih’s experience or about the Nike supplier that employed her in the 1990s, nor did Knight provide comment. Instead, Nike issued a broad statement saying, in part, “We’re appreciative of the efforts that individuals and organizations, including Cicih, have made in helping push the industry forward.” Nike said the company has been “deeply committed to advancing a responsible and resilient supply chain for more than 30 years” and that while progress hasn’t been perfect, it has sought “systemic improvements across the industry.” Nike’s goal, the statement said, is that “all people involved in the manufacturing of Nike’s products are respected, valued, and treated fairly.” Cicih keeps tokens of her activism in her home, including a framed poster that depicts a factory worker and reads, “Who made your shoes?” Jeff Ballinger, a labor organizer who was prominent in the 1990s’ anti-sweatshop movement, gave it to her. In an interview, Ballinger said he still considers Cicih a “hero” — albeit unsung, even in Tangerang, the industrial hub where the Indonesian factory movement took off. “Like in wartime, some people just step up,” Ballinger said. “In a perfect world, there’d be a statue of her in Tangerang.” $1.26 a Day Cicih sat for an interview in a backyard filled by a chicken coop and a small garden that included pumpkins, bananas and edible bamboo. The small house she and one of her sisters inherited from their parents in Menes, her childhood village about a 90-mile drive west of Jakarta, is now home. After putting out snacks that included a traditional Indonesian dessert made from rice and grated coconut in banana leaves, Cicih often flashed a wide grin as she reflected on a life intertwined with Nike’s emergence in her country. Cicih grows coconuts, bananas, tomatoes, pumpkins and bamboo in her family’s garden, in addition to raising chickens. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Nike, then known as Blue Ribbon Sports, bought its first sneakers from Japanese factories in the 1960s. But as Japan’s wages rose, it shifted manufacturing to lower-cost Asian countries, including Taiwan and South Korea. In 1988, it started making sneakers in Indonesia. The country had a terrible human rights record, but it was eager to attract foreign investors. Factories in Jakarta paid wages as low as $1 a day, compared with $8 in South Korea, $14 in Taiwan and $33 in Tokyo, according to a 1988 State Department report. In 1989, five years after she graduated from high school, Cicih joined one of her sisters making Nike sneakers at the Sung Hwa Dunia factory 40 miles west of Jakarta, Indonesia’s biggest city. She started work each day at 7 a.m. At first, she said, she cleaned glue and chemicals off sneakers with her bare hands. Then she moved to a glue line, attaching soles to shoes. The factory was poorly ventilated. Co-workers coughed from the fumes. Cicih recalled seeing one person faint and then return to the assembly line because factory managers didn’t give her permission to go home. (The factory is still open, but it has changed owners and now has a different name. The current owner did not respond to emails. The previous owner could not be reached.) The factory formerly called Sung Hwa Dunia in Indonesia has changed hands since Cicih worked there. It is currently listed for sale. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Worker safety was “very, very bad,” Cicih said through an independent journalist The Oregonian/OregonLive hired to translate the conversation. “There were many, many labor laws that the company did not follow,” she added. Like today, the vast majority of factory workers were young women. Most of the managers were older men, which Cicih said led to a natural power imbalance and problems with sexual harassment. “I have watched and seen a lot of women being sexually abused, or touched inappropriately,” she said. There was constant pressure to meet daily production quotas. Cicih made $1.26 a day, around minimum wage. A 1989 study found the minimum wage was so low that many factory workers were malnourished. “It was not enough for me to get by on a daily basis,” she said. “However, I had to make it on the amount I received.” Cicih often worked overtime until 9 p.m. Sometimes she worked on Saturday and Sunday, which she considered forced labor. The amount of overtime, she said, motivated her to “rebel.” Cicih worked at a Nike supplier in Serang, Indonesia. She says the factory broke “many, many labor laws.” Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica “A Wage Increase Was the Top Priority”  The turning point for Cicih came when one of the company’s buses, which workers rode to the factory and were always overcrowded, flipped and killed a co-worker. “How can we protest this issue to the company?” she asked another co-worker. Unbeknownst to Cicih, this co-worker had joined an organization that taught workers about labor rights. Cicih faked a doctor’s letter, got a sick day and took a class. Through the organization, she met Ballinger, who had moved to Indonesia to organize factory workers. In 1992, Ballinger wrote a story for Harper’s Magazine that compared the wages of Sadisah, one of Cicih’s co-workers, to the earnings of Nike endorser Michael Jordan. Sadisah earned 14 cents an hour. It would have taken her more than 44,000 years to make what Jordan earned from Nike in a single year. Cicih started skipping lunch and prayer breaks to organize her co-workers. On Sept. 28, 1992, Cicih and workers from her factory went on strike. The New York Times reported 600 walked out, but Cicih and other activists have put the number of strikers in the thousands. They demanded better treatment of women, better union representation, better food, better transportation and, most importantly, better pay. “A wage increase was the top priority,” she said, holding up the original document that listed protesters’ demands. Cicih and her friends gathered before a labor rights training course. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica In 1992, Cicih photographed her fellow workers meeting about going on strike. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Her activism came with great risks. Around that time, Marsinah, a factory worker who was recognized last year as the country’s first National Hero from the labor movement, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered . “Military and police were everywhere,” Cicih said, but she said her desire to help her co-workers “eclipsed all the fear.” The strike lasted two days. It ended after the factory agreed to increase wages for many employees, Cicih said, but she added that her seniority made her eligible for just a small raise. The company accepted other demands, including allowing menstrual leave. Cicih said she was the first worker to take it. That same year that Cicih led the strike, Nike released a code of conduct, becoming one of the first brands to do so. Codes of conduct have since become the default method companies like Nike use to police overseas factories. The basic system: The company writes rules and contract factories agree to follow them. Auditors monitor compliance. A few months after the strike, Cicih and roughly two dozen of her co-workers got laid off. Leslie Milano, a prominent American labor organizer in the early 2000s, said unemployment at the time was high in Indonesia. “That’s why a lot of people didn’t want to do what Cicih did,” Milano said. “They didn’t want to lose their jobs.” Thirty-plus years after she began her organizing work, Cicih struggles to make ends meet. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica Cicih said that not long after being laid off, she was hauled into a police station and spent two days being pressured to confess to destruction of property and causing a disturbance. She was not allowed to go to the bathroom, she said. Cicih said the police made her watch them beat a suspect. Then they made her sit in his blood, she said, before releasing her. The Indonesian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to questions about military repression of worker rights in the 1990s. (The country undertook democratic reform after the dictator Suharto stepped down in 1998, although problems remain.) After her release, encouraged by Ballinger and others, she joined co-workers in filing a lawsuit against the factory alleging wrongful termination. The lawsuit went all the way to Indonesia’s Supreme Court. In 1996, Cicih and her co-workers prevailed. She got about $200 in back wages. She still has the check in a binder with other documents from her organizing days. For two years of lost wages, Ballinger figures Cicih should have gotten more than $2,000. That would have been enough to set up a small business. “It would have been a hell of a lot of money back then,” he said. The movement’s failure to deliver greater restitution to Cicih and others “is something that I’ll never get over.” Cicih Comes to Oregon  Around the time the lawsuit concluded, in July 1996, Cicih walked onto Nike’s suburban campus near Beaverton, Oregon, and demanded a meeting with the company’s co-founder. “I’m here to meet with Phil Knight,” she said, according to The Oregonian’s coverage of her visit. “I want to ask him to consider the plight of Indonesian workers.” Cicih had stayed in touch with Ballinger. He helped bring her to the United States to put pressure on Nike, one of four such visits she made to the country. Knight refused to see her. Cicih tried to meet with Nike’s Phil Knight when she visited Oregon in 1996. As part of the trip, she also held a press conference in front of the company’s downtown Portland store. Kathryn Scott/The Oregonian/OregonLive A week before Cicih arrived in Beaverton, Knight wrote a letter to her trip’s organizers, saying he was “sympathetic” to her case but preferred to meet with people “interested in constructive, proactive solutions, not those who announce their intentions through news conferences and mean-spirited media campaigns.” He defended Nike’s response to problems at Cicih’s factory, saying Nike had worked to correct them. “The factory where Ms. Sukaesih worked has been under new Indonesian management for two years, the grievances have been addressed and the minimum wage is in force,” Knight wrote. “In our view, this is an example of the benefit Nike brings in upgrading labor practices in emerging market societies.” Cicih keeps many of the documents from her labor organizing days in a three-ring binder. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica After she made her request to meet with Knight, a “trio of beefy Nike security guards” escorted Cicih off Nike’s campus and local sheriff’s deputies asked her to leave the premises, according to The Oregonian’s coverage. Roughly a week later, Knight sat across the table from President Bill Clinton at the White House to talk about labor reforms, according to records obtained from the Clinton Presidential Library. Knight then stood in the Rose Garden behind Clinton as the president announced a sweeping effort to address sweatshop conditions in overseas factories. “While I think that we have been good citizens within our industry, I think there’s clearly a lot more that we can do, that we can indeed be better,” Knight said in his brief remarks. The meeting with Clinton led to the creation of the Fair Labor Association, one of several groups that monitor factory working conditions. Knight publicly committed to specific sweatshop reforms in a 1998 speech at the National Press Club . Knight announced six changes, including heightened indoor air quality standards, increased factory monitoring and raising the minimum age in footwear factories to 18. He didn’t say anything about raising wages. “You Have to Fight” These days, Nike factory workers in Indonesia told The Oregonian/OregonLive, the kind of forced overtime that sparked Cicih’s desire to “rebel” is nonexistent. They also said Nike lived up to Knight’s commitment to get underage workers out of Indonesian factories. But they said problems remain. In interviews, they criticized the auditing process, the linchpin of the factory monitoring system that Nike helped pioneer. Workers said factories know in advance when auditors will arrive. At one factory, workers said safety equipment had been distributed on the eve of an audit. “The best time to work at a Nike factory is when it’s being audited,” a worker said. Workers said more rigorous and consistent auditing would catch problems with safety and sexual harassment, which they said remain persistent. Asked about the workers’ description of factories prepping for planned audits, Nike said that it conducts unannounced audits in addition to those that are scheduled in advance, and that these are supplemented by “worker engagement and well-being surveys,” among other efforts. “When issues are brought to our attention, through any mechanism, we work with suppliers to validate, identify root causes and implement comprehensive remediation processes,” Nike said.  Nike’s most recent disclosures say 87% of the 623 suppliers it audited in fiscal year 2024 at least met the company’s basic code of conduct requirements. The company also disclosed a factory injury rate significantly below its peers. Less than 1% of code of conduct violations related to harassment and abuse, according to the disclosure. Workers and union leaders also say their No. 1 concern — low wages — has not been addressed. Many said they work second jobs to make ends meet. “One job isn’t enough,” Keady said. “They’re not getting a second job because they want to send their kid to a really good private school or they want to buy a home in a great neighborhood. They’re getting a second job because they can’t afford three meals a day for their family.” Cicih also has struggled. After her lawsuit against the factory that once employed her, she had the option to return, but she declined. She thought the environment would be uncomfortable because of her history as an organizer. She did some volunteer work as a labor organizer. Some other organizers encouraged her to set up a small business. Those efforts never panned out. She moved back to her hometown of Menes in 2018. A sister on whom Cicih depended financially died during the pandemic. Cicih opened a roadside food stall and sold vegetable salad and gado gado, a type of Indonesian dish, but it didn’t go well. She gets by on donations from American do-gooders, including Keady. She grows some of her own food. She doesn’t have a pension or savings. “Nothing,” she said. But she’s resolute. “You have to do this,” she said, reflecting on her years as an activist. “You have to fight.” Cicih at home. Despite the struggles she faced in her labor activism, she still believes in fighting for workers’ rights. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica The post She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad. appeared first on ProPublica .

Two Alaska school districts filed a lawsuit on Jan. 20 in Anchorage Superior Court against the state, its governor and its education commissioner over what they say is a long-running failure to adequately fund public education. In the complaint, the Kuspuk School District and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District argue “the state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation” to provide Alaska students “a sound basic education and meaningful opportunity for proficiency” in vital subjects, and to fund schools and school districts sufficiently to do that. The plaintiffs are seeking to force the state to fulfill its constitutional obligation and requesting a court-ordered study to determine what it costs to educate students. “Alaska, we don’t believe, has ever done an adequacy study to really understand what it would take to allow Alaska students a fair opportunity to learn the skills they need to participate and contribute to society,” said Matt Singer, a trial attorney representing the plaintiffs. “If you don’t know what something is going to cost, then you can’t have a conversation with the Legislature about how to fund it.” The lawsuit points to the effects of chronic underfunding: low proficiency test scores; reductions in teaching staff; and the elimination of fine arts as well as career technical and vocational education programs. It also cites dangerous conditions inside school buildings. Over the last year, KYUK, NPR and ProPublica have spotlighted poor health and safety conditions inside many rural school buildings across Alaska . The reporting showed how the state has largely ignored hundreds of requests from rural school districts to fix deteriorating buildings and that some of the worst conditions exist at state-owned schools. Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said that since Gov. Mike Dunleavy took office in 2018, he had put little money toward education. “That’s almost a decade of just starting at nothing, and when you have to claw your way to even less than minimal funding, that takes a toll,” said Aguillard. A spokesperson with the governor’s office referred questions about the lawsuit to the state Department of Law. “The responsible path is legislation — not litigation,” Department of Law spokesperson Sam Curtis wrote in an email. The education clause in Alaska’s constitution does not specify a dollar amount for education. Instead, wrote Curtis, the constitution “vests the power of the purse squarely in the Legislature and the Governor. The legislative session began today. That is where education policy and funding decisions are meant to be debated and resolved.” It’s not a coincidence the suit was filed on the same day legislators convened in Juneau for this year’s legislative session, said Fairbanks Superintendent Luke Meinert. “I think it sends the message that the work on education funding is not done,” said Meinert. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for her department also referred questions to Alaska’s  Department of Law. Prior to her appointment as commissioner, Bishop was superintendent of the Anchorage School District, the state’s largest. In that position, Bishop consistently advocated for increased state funding for public schools through a change to Alaska’s education funding formula. As commissioner, Bishop has said her department is not responsible for allocating funds for education. “The levers that I can pull aren’t levers for funding,” Bishop said in a 2024 interview. “I don’t create the money. The Legislature creates that, but we can certainly support policy that would help support schools as their needs come up.” Caroline Storm, executive director of the Coalition for Education Equity, an Alaska-based nonprofit organization representing school districts and their leadership that is helping finance the lawsuit, said years of advocacy from her organization and others simply “hasn’t moved the needle enough” in the state to pay for wide-ranging needs from curriculum to building maintenance. She said the lack of financial support for public education should be central to this year’s election cycle. Alaska’s public schools receive funding from two state budgets. Capital funds pay for building maintenance, upgrades and construction. Money for operations, often referred to as the Base Student Allocation, buys things like textbooks and pays for teachers’ salaries. According to the complaint, Alaska allocated $5,800 per student in 2015. Over a decade, the number had risen to $5,960, significantly less than the rate of inflation. In all regards, Singer said, the state is failing. “In order to provide a basic sound education, you need a lot of different things,” he said. “One of the things is a safe school building with a roof and heater. Another thing you need is a competent teacher standing in front of a classroom educating young people.” After years of relatively flat state funding for schools amid rising operational costs, Alaska lawmakers during the 2025 legislative session passed a $700 increase to the BSA, then gained enough support to override Dunleavy’s veto of the bipartisan education bill — and later overrode his veto of $50 million in education funding from the budget. In recent years, lawmakers have been at odds with Dunleavy , who has blamed declining enrollment on school closures and who has also called for a statewide open enrollment system and for policy changes to benefit charter schools. Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said chronic underfunding is having an outsized impact on districts like hers, where the student population is predominantly Indigenous. Gabby Hiestand Salgado/KYUK While advocates celebrated the funding increase, many education leaders have said it still falls short of what school districts need to effectively operate, and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said the increase was “woefully insufficient to keep pace with inflation, which had eroded purchasing power by 37% in the preceding decade.” There are more than 50 school districts in Alaska, and most are located within cities or organized boroughs, which have access to local tax revenue to help fund education. But 19 are almost entirely reliant on the state for funds because they serve rural, unincorporated communities where money from local taxes is not available. Dozens of those rural school buildings are owned by the state education department , including in the Kuspuk district, which covers an area in Western Alaska that’s roughly the size of Maryland. State assessment data on student performance within the Kuspuk district is “dire,” according to the legal complaint. The numbers show that 90% of the district’s 330 students during the 2024-25 school year were not proficient in English language arts, math or science. Aguillard, the superintendent, said chronic underfunding from the state is having an outsized impact on districts like hers, where the student population is predominantly Indigenous. She said those students also suffer because her district has had to pull funds from its operational budget to keep buildings open. That money has gone to fix failing plumbing and fire suppression systems and to help repair problems with building foundations and leaky roofs. Earlier this month, Aguillard got word from an architect that most of the joists that hold up the roof of the school gym in Aniak are broken. “We are closing the high school immediately and beginning plans to demolish before it collapses,” she wrote in a text message. In the last three years, experts have said at least three buildings in her district should not be occupied . This winter, a prolonged and extreme cold snap meant that eight of the Kuspuk district’s nine buildings could not open in time for students to return from the holiday break because there was no running water, heat or electricity. The majority of the buildings in the district are owned by Alaska’s education department. “It’s unsettling,” Aguillard said. “Our buildings should not be shutting down so easily. It’s really just evidence of the decline of the capacity of those buildings.” Dozens of studies cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on its website highlight the negative effects of poor maintenance and conditions inside schools on student performance . The investigation found black mold inside several Alaska schools. Exposure can increase the risk of asthma and is linked to higher rates of absenteeism. According to the agency, leaking roofs and problems with heating and ventilation can also impact academic performance. Read More A Rural Alaska School Asked the State to Fund a Repair. Nearly Two Decades Later, the Building Is About to Collapse. The situation isn’t unique to rural school districts, however. In an interview, Meinert, the Fairbanks superintendent, described the tangible impact a $5 million budget deficit has had in his district, one of the three largest in the state. In the last five years, seven schools in his district have closed due to a budget shortfall. Since 2019, Meinert said, his district has terminated more than 300 teaching positions, which means class sizes have swelled to more than double what the National Center for Education Statistics reported for the state five years ago, sometimes topping 40 students in a classroom. Meinert contends that a lack of state financial support within his district is also disproportionately impacting the minority student population. State assessments show that more than 76% of Indigenous and economically disadvantaged students in the district are not proficient in English language arts. The post Two School Districts Sue, Claiming Alaska Is Failing Its Constitutional Obligation to Fund Public Education appeared first on ProPublica .

Six senators accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche this week of having a conflict of interest when he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges and eliminated an enforcement team dedicated to looking for crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes. A letter written by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Mazie Hirono and signed by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Christopher Coons and Richard Blumenthal cited a ProPublica investigation that revealed Blanche owned at least $159,000 worth of crypto-related assets when he ordered an end to the work. Durbin, Hirono, Whitehouse, Coons and Blumenthal serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee , which oversees the Justice Department. The same senators previously sent a letter to Blanche raising concerns that his actions would help President Donald Trump’s financial interests in cryptocurrency. In their letter sent on Wednesday, they said Blanche’s actions appeared to violate the federal conflict of interest law. “Last year, we asked for the rationale behind your puzzling decision to scale back the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) cryptocurrency enforcement efforts and urged you to reconsider. We write now in light of recent reporting that you held substantial amounts of cryptocurrency at the time you made this decision,” the senators wrote. “At the very least, you had a glaring conflict of interest and should have recused yourself.” Blanche, the second-highest-ranking official at the Justice Department, signed an ethics agreement in February promising to dump his cryptocurrency within 90 days of his confirmation and not to participate in any matter that could have a “direct and predictable effect on my financial interests in the virtual currency” until his bitcoin and other crypto-related products were sold. But on April 7, before he divested, he issued a memo titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution” that halted investigations launched under President Joe Biden. In the memo, Blanche condemned the Biden Justice Department’s tough approach toward crypto as “a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed.” The memo disbanded the agency’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team , which had won several high-profile crypto-related convictions. Blanche said the agency would instead target only the terrorists and drug traffickers who illicitly used crypto, not the platforms that hosted them. Days later, the six senators urged Blanche to reconsider, contending that his decision would otherwise help support sanctions evasion, drug trafficking, scams and child exploitation. In their latest letter, they said their concerns had been realized. They cited an independent report that found there was a surge in illicit cryptocurrency activities in 2025, including crimes tied to money laundering and human trafficking. They also questioned Blanche’s reasons for the policy shift. “Certainly, President Trump’s financial interests seem to have motivated some of his pardons of criminals convicted of cryptocurrency-related crimes,” their letter stated. “But the fact that you held substantial amounts of cryptocurrency at the time you made this decision calls into question your own motivations.” A Justice Department spokesperson told ProPublica last week that Blanche’s crypto orders were “appropriately flagged, addressed and cleared in advance.” She did not elaborate or respond to questions asking who cleared his actions. The department did not respond this week to requests for comment about the senators’ criticism. In this week’s letter, the six Democratic senators issued a series of questions demanding details about how and when Blanche’s actions were cleared and by whom. They also asked Blanche to, no later than Feb. 11, provide any written determination he received about the legality of his crypto enforcement action; all his communications with ethics and Justice Department officials about the issue; and any communications he had with the crypto industry prior to issuing his April memo. Their demands come approximately a week after the Campaign Legal Center , a nonpartisan government watchdog group, asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate Blanche . Kedric Payne, the group’s general counsel and senior director of ethics, alleged that Blanche’s orders violated the law because they benefited the industry broadly, including his own investments. Payne estimated that the value of Blanche’s bitcoin holdings alone rose by 34%, to $105,881.53, between when he issued the memo and when he divested. At the time he issued the memo, Blanche also held investments in several other cryptocurrencies, including Solana and Ethereum, and stock holdings in Coinbase. Read More Top DOJ Official Shut Down Enforcement Against Crypto Companies While Holding More Than $150,000 in Crypto Investments Under the federal conflicts-of-interest statute , government officials are forbidden from taking part in a “particular matter” that can financially benefit them or their immediate family unless they have a special waiver from the government. The penalties range from up to one year in jail or a civil fine of up to $50,000 all the way to as much as five years in prison if someone willfully violates the law. “The public has a right to know that decisions are being made in the public’s best interest and not to benefit a government employee’s financial interests,” Payne wrote in his complaint to the inspector general. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, was Trump’s lead attorney in the Manhattan trial that resulted in his being convicted of 34 felonies stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. Blanche also defended Trump against criminal charges accusing him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election and retaining highly classified documents. (Those two cases were dropped after Trump was reelected president.) Payne’s group expanded its investigation request on Wednesday, asking the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department’s ethics officer to look into whether Blanche violated his ethics agreement, the federal conflicts-of-interest statute and the federal law prohibiting false statements on compliance forms. The post Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of “Glaring” Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation appeared first on ProPublica .

The owner of a marijuana testing lab called a top regulator in Colorado on his cellphone in April 2024 with an urgent situation. “We’ve got something that’s kind of a big deal,” he remembers saying. During a routine test of a manufacturer’s products, Bona Fides Laboratory in Denver had found a toxic chemical in a popular brand of marijuana vapes sold at dispensaries in Colorado. The chemical, methylene chloride, is prohibited by Colorado’s marijuana regulators and for most uses by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because it can cause liver and lung cancer and damage the nervous, immune and reproductive systems. The owner felt he had a duty to call immediately rather than just submit a report through the state’s online system. As state regulators investigated, they discovered a second problem: The product wasn’t derived from marijuana at all. It came from hemp, a close cousin of marijuana that is much cheaper to produce and that Colorado had banned companies from using to make intoxicating products for sale in the state.  Congress had legalized hemp in 2018 for other uses, such as clothing and rope, and because people believe its high levels of the nonintoxicating compound CBD can help them with seizures, pain and sleep. Hemp has extremely low levels of THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana that gets people high. And federal lawmakers thought allowing it would support farmers and rural jobs without the risks posed by marijuana.  But hemp manufacturers quickly figured out how to convert CBD into THC through a process that involves toxic solvents, creating products that sometimes contain harmful chemicals and that can be more potent than products made from marijuana. Colorado was one of the first states to ban intoxicating hemp products made by chemical processing, initially with regulatory advisories and then with legislation in 2023. In doing so, lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis boasted that Colorado — which had created the first regulated recreational marijuana market in the nation — was once again a model for how to smartly regulate cannabis, generating billions of dollars in tax revenue while keeping consumers safe. But despite the ban, the legislature and regulators failed to adopt many critical regulations that other states have employed to keep hemp products off the shelves.  Unlike some other states, Colorado’s lab testing system operates largely on an honor code, with marijuana manufacturers free to choose the samples they send for analysis. Colorado won’t require labs to test those products for the toxic chemicals used to convert hemp to THC until this summer. The state is also now scrambling to set up its own testing program to randomly purchase products from dispensaries to verify safety. The 2023 law also had an exception that allowed registered hemp companies to continue manufacturing intoxicating hemp products, but only for sale outside the state. Thuy Vu, a compliance consultant who once spearheaded the city of Denver’s marijuana manufacturing inspection regimen, warned lawmakers at the time that the carve-out “was an open invitation for bad actors” that would result in “misbranded products” proliferating in Colorado. The cumulative effect of these gaps means hemp-derived vapes, gummies and other edibles, which may be more dangerous than traditional marijuana products, are making their way to consumers in Colorado, according to regulatory filings, independent testing and lab results filed in litigation against companies and the state. Comparing Marijuana and Hemp Note: Some states that allow the sale of hemp products have restrictions on their potency. Source: Baker Institute’s Drug Policy Program, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, University of North Texas. Chris Alcantara/ProPublica Officials with the state Marijuana Enforcement Division declined requests for an interview. Agency spokesperson Heather Draper said in a statement that the agency updates its testing program on “a nearly annual basis” and “intends to pursue additional regulatory updates to the testing program this year.” She said the division continues to investigate allegations of companies using hemp-derived THC in marijuana products but noted that the inquiries take time because “they can be highly complex and require significant resources to complete.” After the passage of the 2018 federal farm bill, many states were caught off guard as people could buy hemp-derived vapes and gummies similar to marijuana products online or at gas stations across the nation, sometimes without age restrictions. That sparked safety concerns as calls to poison control centers and emergency room visits related to known hemp products surged. “When you have a market that is unregulated, difficult to assess and evolves very quickly, that is a calling card for nefarious agents to step in and make money,” said Michelle Peace, a toxicologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. “So, if they can make something that might have a little bit better of a kick, why not?” Operations at the Denver-based cannabis company Ripple. Its CEO, Justin Singer, said illegal hemp is endangering consumers and undercutting Colorado marijuana businesses. Stephen Swofford/The Denver Gazette With concerns mounting and states creating a hodgepodge of rules governing intoxicating hemp, Congress passed a law in November banning nearly all hemp-derived products starting in the fall of 2026. But how the government will implement that is an open question. In December, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to increase medical marijuana and CBD research, tasking his aides to develop regulations with Congress that would allow some hemp products while barring those that pose serious health risks. For now, it remains up to the states to regulate hemp. And Colorado’s experience underscores how difficult that task is. The hemp derivatives have jeopardized a key promise made to the state’s voters: that marijuana legalization would drive out the black market and create a safer environment through regulation. With hemp, the opposite has happened, marijuana industry representatives say. Following the lab owner’s warning in April 2024, it took state regulators about two months to issue a public health advisory about the toxic vapes. The once-prolific vape manufacturer surrendered its marijuana license in January 2025. Last year, state regulators suspended two more marijuana operators after finding they used hemp-derived THC in products. Read More We Tested Vapes in Colorado for Signs of Hemp. This Is What We Found. The Denver Gazette and ProPublica conducted their own testing on products purchased at legal cannabis dispensaries in August and September. Three of the 14 vape products tested contained compounds and chemical residues that several experts said were indicative of hemp. A fourth vape had a solvent often used to process hemp into THC. The cases of manufacturers swapping marijuana for hemp have threatened Colorado’s marijuna industry so much that many companies are calling for tougher regulation. One even sued the state, asking a judge to force the Marijuana Enforcement Division to overhaul its testing regimen. In court filings, the agency argued that changing testing protocols was unnecessary and impracticable. “The honor system is not working in Colorado,” Justin Trouard, owner of Mammoth Farms, the largest marijuana cultivator in the state, said in the lawsuit. “The strong economic incentives for hemp inversion have made it common practice in Colorado.” Justin Trouard, a Colorado marijana cultivator, at his factory. Trouard alleges widespread infiltration of hemp-derived THC products into the regulated marijana market in the state. Stephen Swofford/The Denver Gazette “The Marijuana ‘Goods’ Have Changed” Colorado seemed well-prepared to take on hemp after the world’s first stores licensed to sell marijuana opened there in 2014.  The state developed a “seed-to-sale” system to track marijuana from the initial planting  to the purchase of pot, vapes and other products in dispensaries, which was meant to calm fears that marijuana grown in Colorado would be diverted to states where it remained illegal. Colorado also set up licensed private labs to test marijuana products for contaminants and potency. The tracking and testing became foundational elements that other states looked to when they set up their own legalization programs.  The first wake-up call for Colorado marijuana regulators about intoxicating hemp came in 2021. A Broomfield man, whose business used marijuana to make the honey-colored syrup known as distillate that goes into vapes and gummies, reported that another company, Mile High Distributing, was making distillate from hemp and selling it as a marijuana product. Mile High’s owner, Jeffry Knight, who ran a string of Florida nightclubs and restaurants, had teamed up with retired pharmaceutical industry chemist Harold Meckler to come up with a way to convert hemp CBD into highly potent and profitable THC distillate for a fraction of what it cost to use marijuana, according to patents, a state investigation and interviews with Knight and Meckler. After investigating the complaint, Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division sought to bar Mile High from participating in the state’s marijuana industry, arguing the company had used solvents and a chemical conversion process that weren’t allowed to make a new hemp-derived concentrate for products sold in marijuana dispensaries. At the suspension hearing, Meckler testified that Mile High’s hemp distillate was “probably safer” than what you get from “Mother Nature,” stressing that distillation should remove any chemicals used in the process. But Heather Krug, then Colorado’s state cannabis sciences program manager, worried that did not occur and testified at the hearing about the dangers posed if chemical residue remained in the final product. “When you inhale something,” she said, “it tends to go directly into your lungs and into your bloodstream and goes right to your brain.” Jeffry Knight, who owned Mile High Distributing, says his competitors stole his company’s patented techniques and are doing what he was suspended for. Chip Weiner for ProPublica Denver Fire Department officials expressed concern that if the chemicals inside Mile High caught fire or exploded, a plume of toxic gas would have reached 1 to 2 miles over Denver neighborhoods, according to a simulation run by the department’s hazmat team. “A new breed of marijuana concentrate has entered Colorado’s cannabis market,” state hearing officer Milla Lishchuk said in her suspension order, warning that the state had failed to keep up with the changing industry. “Essentially, the marijuana ‘goods’ have changed in the cannabis market, but the laws — at least in Colorado — have not.” She suspended Mile High’s marijuana manufacturing license for three years, and the company went out of business.  In an interview, Knight said that after his suspension, he had tests conducted on about a dozen products from Colorado dispensaries and found that two-thirds of them were hemp derivatives. He said his competitors simply stole his company’s patented techniques and were doing what he was suspended for. “There’s a bunch of guys in Colorado that are making it illegally,” Knight said in the interview. (Knight is facing criminal charges in Florida after a fatal boat crash last year. He has pleaded not guilty.) Knight and Meckler contend that they didn’t endanger anyone with Mile High products but that the chemical conversion process could be dangerous in the wrong hands. “There’s a lot of people that don’t know what they’re doing,” Meckler said.   Mile High’s case prompted Colorado regulators to issue warning bulletins about hemp-derived THC in 2021, but it took state lawmakers nearly two years before they passed legislation that confirmed regulators could ban the sale of intoxicating hemp products in Colorado. By then, the hemp industry was already entrenched in Colorado. It had invested over $300 million in the state and generated $800 million in annual revenues, according to one industry estimate given to lawmakers. It’s unclear how much of that is intoxicating products. But an industry expert told a legislative task force that Colorado had become “the biggest provider of hemp-finished products in North America.” Intoxicating hemp products were also spreading widely across the country. Several states took action. Oklahoma, for example, launched a secret-shopper program to ensure accurate labeling for its sanctioned medical marijuana products, including tests to detect banned solvents. Other states that had followed Colorado’s lead in full marijuana legalization have since adopted more robust measures that Colorado did not. Of the 43 regulated recreational and medical marijuana markets in states and the District of Columbia, 24 require testing for methylene chloride. Federal health officials also began to sound the alarm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a public warning about the risks of hemp-derived THC in 2021 after a spike in hospitalizations, including children who had consumed hemp gummies. The following year, the Food and Drug Administration warned that hemp that had been chemically converted into THC “may have potentially harmful by-products (contaminants) due to the chemicals used in the process.” And studies found THC products derived from hemp caused more harm than marijuana. A review of FDA data from 2018 to 2021 found triple the number of adverse events tied to delta-8 THC, a compound common in products chemically derived from hemp, as that in delta-9 THC, the version found in marijuana. Like other states, Colorado requires marijuana manufacturers to have labs test their products to ensure safety. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia require lab personnel to collect samples for testing to ensure that manufacturers don’t cherry-pick products for testing and hold back contaminated products.  But Colorado lets manufacturers select samples for testing. The state found two dozen cases in which companies had manipulated testing in 2024 alone, according to a review of Marijuana Enforcement Division reports. The violations ranged from substituting samples that were different from what companies sold in stores to the use of unauthorized chemical treatments on submitted samples. In an April court filing in the lawsuit brought by Mammoth Farms, the division said it saw no reason to require testing for methylene chloride since it’s already banned and that doing so would be “unreasonably impracticable.” The agency’s attorneys said state employees couldn’t collect samples for testing because they are barred from possessing controlled substances, but the filing didn’t say why private labs couldn’t gather them. Marijuana industry officials say this resistance by regulators has made it easier for manufacturers to cheat by using hemp-derived distillates. They also say the lack of regulation makes it hard to detect whether the distillate they buy is derived from hemp. “It has never been cheaper to get the results that I want and more expensive to get an accurate understanding of what is in my inventory,” Justin Singer, CEO of Denver-based cannabis company Ripple, said at a recent policy forum. “If you actually want an accurate number, you cannot get one today if you care about accuracy. If you just care about passing the test, you can get that for 120 bucks.” Test Results Raise Suspicions The gaps in Colorado’s marijuana laws have allowed hemp to keep showing up throughout the market. Time and again, Colorado has issued late warnings to the public or delayed enforcement action, even when officials were aware of the violations. The biggest discovery of illegal hemp products occurred with the tainted vapes that Bona Fides Laboratory called about in April 2024. But it wasn’t the first time Colorado regulators had heard concerns about the company, Ware Hause. In October 2023, a whistleblower warned the Marijuana Enforcement Division that Ware Hause was chemically converting hemp to make intoxicating vapes and selling them as marijuana. The state opened an investigation after the 2023 report, but regulators didn’t warn the public until June 2024, a couple of months after the lab reported the positive tests for methylene chloride. The Marijuana Enforcement Division told consumers to destroy or return Ware Hause vapes bought as many as five months earlier. The agency determined that samples Ware Hause had submitted for testing were not representative of what it put out to market.  Ware Hause’s owner, Thanh Hau, declined requests for an interview and did not respond to detailed questions. The problem was more widespread than Ware Hause, according to Mammoth Farms, which grows marijuana and has a lot to lose if hemp infiltrates the market. The company sued Ware Hause and three other manufacturers last year, claiming that independent testing showed their vapes contained distillate derived from hemp. Mammoth Farms argued that the low-cost hemp put consumers at risk and also put it and other companies at a competitive disadvantage. The companies have denied the allegations, and Ware Hause countersued, contending that Mammoth Farms was the one using hemp derivatives to make distillate, an allegation Mammoth Farms denied. For now, Colorado doesn’t have a testing regimen to detect hemp to help sort out such conflicts. Cannabis samples sit in agitation equipment at Kaycha Labs in Denver. The facility provides comprehensive testing for potency, contamination and compliance with state and federal regulations, including the presence of illegal synthetic cannabinoids. Stephen Swofford/The Denver Gazette In March, Mammoth Farms filed another lawsuit against the Marijuana Enforcement Division, arguing that the testing system and seed-to-sale tracking program were failing to catch impostor products derived from hemp. During a court hearing in that case last spring, an official for Purplebee’s, once the largest marijuana distillate manufacturer in Colorado, said hemp distillate was making it hard to turn a profit. James Parco, former president of manufacturing, said the price of distillate had cratered to $2 a gram. That was down 85% from what testimony in another case estimated it had been four years earlier, and he said the decline forced his company out of the distillate business. The judge dismissed the lawsuit against the enforcement division in May on procedural grounds, stating that Mammoth Farms should have petitioned regulators for rule changes before filing the suit. Regulators have since found other hemp cases. The Commission Cartel, a marijuana manufacturer, surrendered its license in July after the Marijuana Enforcement Division found vials of hemp-derived compounds in a refrigerator at the factory it was using.  One of the company’s owners, Joshua Littlejohn, denied in an interview that the company used hemp in its edibles and said it had instead used hemp to manufacture body creams for another company, which state regulators said still wasn’t allowed because the hemp had intoxicating levels. He said he surrendered his license because fighting regulators would cost too much. Colorado regulators have started taking steps to adopt regulations that other states have, with a trial of an off-the-shelf testing program to buy products from dispensaries and double-check the work of labs.  They also agreed to require testing for methylene chloride before any products can go to dispensaries. Still, the state delayed implementation until July to give labs time to adjust their practices. “It’s not enough,” said Singer, the owner of Ripple. “It is a start. But like, again, they’re four years late at least.” The post Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country appeared first on ProPublica .

Leaders in the Colorado marijuana industry have complained in recent years that intoxicating products derived from hemp are endangering consumers and creating unfair competition, threatening to upend the first regulated recreational marijuana market in the United States. While labs have developed the technology to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, the state has been slow to implement a random testing program to check the quality of products on dispensary shelves. In the absence of official testing, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica set out to test whether the claims of widespread hemp substitution were accurate, purchasing 14 vapes at dispensaries across the Denver area. Read More Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country Hemp naturally has high levels of the nonintoxicating compound CBD but only trace amounts of THC, the chemical in marijuana that gets people high. But some manufacturers have been caught by Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division converting CBD from hemp into THC using solvents — a process banned in the state. Labs can detect indicators of this process by looking for versions of THC known as delta-8 and delta-10, which often emerge when CBD from hemp is chemically converted to THC. They can also identify residues of solvents that are typically used in that process but not in marijuana production. Three of the news organizations’ samples had levels of delta-8 or delta-10 THC between 1.1% and 3.3%, which experts said was significant because they rarely show up at those levels naturally.  “Anything beyond trace amounts is suspicious,” said Monica Pittiglio, the analytical director for Colorado Chromatography Labs, which has done research into hemp-derived THC. “Anything over 1% is insane,” she noted after reviewing the news outlets’ test results.  Experts consulted by the news organizations, however, weren’t unanimous that the results amounted to conclusive evidence of hemp-derived THC. Some noted that compounds extracted from plant material can degrade into those rarer compounds with age or imprecise processing. The samples included products from: Dutch Botanicals, an Aurora marijuana manufacturer whose license the state suspended in May, pending a final determination. Regulators accused the company of producing intoxicating hemp-derived THC. Two of its vape products tested by the news outlets were positive for delta-8 THC. Owner Jenny Tran acknowledged the state’s allegations but denied using hemp and said she is fighting the state’s efforts to revoke her license. Rockin Extracts, a marijuana processor in Pueblo County. A vape showed anomalous levels of delta-10 THC. It also contained residues of volatile solvents that were different from those listed on the package. The company’s attorney denied it used hemp additives and blamed the anomalous compound on natural degradation, though the product was tested eight months before the sell-by date. The oil used to make the vapes, the attorney said, was purchased from another company. C2CC, a Denver marijuana manufacturer that does business as Bonanza. The company’s Flyin’ Hawaiian vape contained toluene, a dangerous solvent that was not listed on the packaging. Independent chemists said it should not be found in marijuana products and is indicative of hemp-derived THC, as it can be used in the conversion process. Conlan Keller, co-founder of C2CC, said the distillate was purchased from a supplier and that his company requires certificates of analysis for any product it buys to ensure compliance and quality. Experts said findings like these could warrant further investigations into the processes used to make the products. They also said the ambiguity around determining conclusively whether a product was derived or partially derived from hemp highlights a need for more effective regulations. The Marijuana Enforcement Division declined to comment on The Gazette and ProPublica’s test results. Last fall, Colorado launched a pilot off-the-shelf testing program to buy products from dispensaries and double-check the work of labs. State regulators planned to collect up to 150 samples from October to December, a small fraction of the more than $1 billion in marijuana products sold in the state annually. But the new program has already run into delays. Heather Draper, the division’s spokesperson, said the off-the-shelf testing program remains in “initial steps.” Permanently establishing it, she said, will require “increased resources with appropriate funding.” The post We Tested Vapes in Colorado for Signs of Hemp. This Is What We Found. appeared first on ProPublica .

When the FBI executed a warrant on Wednesday to seize records from the 2020 presidential vote in Fulton County, Georgia, it marked both an extraordinary event in the history of American elections and a significant escalation in President Donald Trump’s breaking of democratic norms, several legal experts said. Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him and blamed Georgia, in particular, for his loss to Joe Biden. After the election, he famously made a call pressuring the secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win . About a week ago, in a speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump once again called the 2020 election “rigged” and promised, “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”  The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. “I’m not aware of something like this happening ever before,” said Rick Hasen, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. “The idea that federal officials would seize ballots in an attempt to prove fraud is especially dangerous in this context when we know there is no fraud because the Georgia 2020 election has been extensively counted, recounted and investigated.” Trump and his allies filed over 60 legal cases across the nation seeking to overturn the 2020 election results — all of which failed , even those before Trump-appointed judges.  “This just looks like a way to use the might of the federal government to further Trump’s voter fraud narratives,” Hasen said. An FBI spokesperson declined a request for comment except to say that the bureau “is conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity. No other information is available at this time.” At a press conference , Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said that the ballots had been “safe” in the county’s custody and defended its handling of the election as fair and accurate. But now that the ballots had been seized, he said, the county “can no longer satisfy … that those ballots are still secure.” Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.  “This is not legitimate. This is Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” Ivory said. “This is his way to sow doubt that Fulton County doesn’t hold proper elections.” Fulton County — which covers much of the Democratic-stronghold of Atlanta — has long been the target of attempts to call into question its election systems as a way to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 vote.  In the immediate aftermath of the election, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani accused election workers of rigging the vote with suitcases of ballots in his arguments to overturn the election — claims that were quickly debunked and for which he lost a nearly $150 million defamation lawsuit brought by two of the workers. But this did not end the focus on the county by Trump’s allies, who inundated it with thousands of voter registration challenges and continued to make claims of voter fraud, as ProPublica has reported .  The Fulton County Board of Elections became a battleground, once the Republican Party appointed Julie Adams to it. Adams, ProPublica has reported , played a key role in trying to change rules around certifying elections in Georgia that could have allowed activists to dispute a Trump loss in 2024. (Adams didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica for these articles.) In advance of the 2024 election, right-wing activists also forced out a moderate conservative on the Georgia State Election Board, tilting its balance of power. Its new MAGA majority — which Trump praised by name at a rally as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory” — began relitigating the 2020 election. In October 2024, the State Election Board voted to issue subpoenas for 2020 materials , including ballots.  Once Trump returned to the White House, state and federal officials combined to pressure Fulton County to hand over 2020 voting materials .  In the months after the State Election Board passed a resolution suggesting the Justice Department should intervene, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent letters to Fulton County officials demanding records and citing “anomalies” in counting votes during the 2020 election, according to a court filing. Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander didn’t respond, and in December the U.S. Department of Justice sued her. In a court filing, Alexander said that the federal government had no right to the ballots and documents, which were under seal because of ongoing cases related to the 2020 election. Alexander said that if Bondi could “identify a legitimate basis” for accessing the 2020 election materials, then she should seek an order from a Fulton County Superior Court judge to unseal them. On Wednesday, agents wearing tactical vests and jackets reading “FBI Evidence Response Team” arrived with a warrant. Shocked officials looked on as the boxes were paraded away. Ivory, the Fulton County commissioner, said that while county officials had complied with the warrant, they expected to challenge the administration’s actions in court.  “We’ve assembled a team to fight back against this,” Ivory said. “We’ll see what happens. The legal maneuvers are happening right now.” Experts said the action in Fulton County had triggered fears of federal interference in this year’s midterm elections. “It’s a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to expand federal control over our country’s historically state-run election infrastructure,” said Derek Clinger, a senior counsel at the State Democracy Research Initiative, an institute at the University of Wisconsin Law School. The post FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is “Dangerous,” Experts Warn appeared first on ProPublica .

New York state may soon guarantee homeless families placed in hotels the same services as those in shelters, including help finding housing, meals and child care. The proposal from the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance follows a ProPublica and New York Focus investigation that found hotels have become the state’s predominant response to homelessness outside of New York City. Counties had placed tens of thousands of adults and children in often-dilapidated hotels, the investigation found, and many people have been cut off from the services promised by the shelter system. The proposed regulations, published Wednesday, will go through a 60-day public comment period before OTDA, which oversees county social services offices, decides whether to adopt, change or drop them. Each county would be required to submit plans for delivering the support services as soon as the rules are adopted. Counties would also have to enforce limits on overcrowding and ensure that children don’t have to share beds with adults. “Everyone placed in emergency housing really should have a fair shot at stability no matter where they’re staying. And so I definitely believe that the state needs to consider and make [the rule change] a priority,” said Democratic Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, chair of her chamber’s committee on local governments and a member of the social services committee. OTDA first outlined new rules for hotel placements on its agenda about five years ago, but they languished there. In response to questions from New York Focus and ProPublica last year, OTDA Commissioner Barbara Guinn said she couldn’t “provide insight” on why the agency never formally proposed the rules. New York Focus and ProPublica interviewed families placed in hotels across the state who said that they weren’t receiving the services that they needed to get out of homelessness. None of the families said that they had received child care, not even those who have children with special needs. Many struggled to feed themselves and were placed in decrepit locations where children and parents slept four or more to a bed. Required Services in Shelters vs. Hotels Note: Requirements are for hotels outside of New York City. New York regulations state that hotels can be considered shelters, and thus mandated to provide services. But there aren’t any that are currently required to do so, Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance spokesperson Anthony Farmer said. Source: New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Despite the lack of services, hotels and motels frequently charged rates far exceeding market rent. Statewide spending on hotel stays outside of New York City topped $110 million in 2024, the investigation found, and more than tripled over six years as the number of hotel placements went up. Counties often shoulder the majority of the bill for families. An OTDA spokesperson said that many counties already provide services to people in hotels. Robert Henke, chairman of the Washington County Board of Supervisors, said his upstate county was one of them. The greater burden, he said, is the cost of hotel stays, which contributed to a county budget crisis and funding cuts. Due to an overwhelming surge in homelessness, spending on hotels leaped from $579,000 to over $1.9 million between 2023 and 2024, according to data obtained through public records requests. Read More Her Family Needed Housing. They Spent Months in New York Hotels, Left to Fend for Themselves. While the new rules don’t directly address these costs or how they’re split among government agencies, OTDA’s proposal noted that with additional support, families may not have to stay in the hotels as long, potentially cutting down on expenses. The agency also said it should cost counties less than $120,000 each to implement the new rules if they haven’t already. Brian Kavanagh, a Democratic state senator representing lower Manhattan and a member of the social services committee, said that he would work to pull together whatever resources are needed to implement the regulations, if they are adopted. Solages said she hopes the new rules will connect families to the help they need. “I hope that we can start expediting this,” she said, “because it’s not only very expensive to do temporary housing via hotels, but a hotel is not a proper place for a family.” The post New York Homeless Families Placed in Hotels Weren’t Guaranteed Social Services. New Regulations Could Change That. appeared first on ProPublica .

On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump took the podium at his inauguration and promised to halt unauthorized border crossings and “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to the places from which they came.” ProPublica and The Texas Tribune spent the first 12 months of Trump’s second term examining in real time how this drive to remove immigrants unfolded across the nation. We collected data the government wouldn’t provide or didn’t track, including how many U.S. citizens had been held by immigration agents . We investigated the crowd-control methods federal agents used in Los Angeles and Chicago and spoke to the families of immigrants that the government sent to Guantanamo . After the Trump administration flew more than 230 men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador , we partnered with Venezuelan journalists to gather records and exclusive U.S. government data. The administration insisted these men were the “worst of the worst.” Our reporting showed that the vast majority did not have criminal convictions in the U.S. The drive toward mass deportation tops the Trump administration’s list of first-year “wins.” Border crossings have plummeted and the number of people held in detention each day is reaching historic highs. As federal agents sweep across U.S. cities and towns, administration officials insist that this multibillion-dollar effort is making the country safer. Reporter Perla Trevizo breaks down the dizzying first year of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Has his administration fulfilled its promises — and if so, at what cost? Watch the video here. The post A Year in Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign appeared first on ProPublica .

An Oklahoma state senator has introduced legislation to strengthen regulations on how oilfield wastewater is injected underground following an investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica . For the legislative session beginning Monday, Sen. Mary Boren, a Democrat and a member of the chamber’s Energy Committee, filed four oil and gas bills to curb industrial pollution or create more transparency for landowners. Laws to increase oversight of oil and gas production, one of the largest industries in the state, often face long odds in Oklahoma, though a few have passed in recent years. The bills would have to win support from leaders in the GOP-controlled Legislature and the state’s Republican governor over industry opposition. But Boren said that the threat to the state’s groundwater is too big to ignore. “My responsibility is to pay attention to things that could solve problems for real Oklahomans,” said Boren, who credited the investigation for calling attention to large-scale pollution from oil and gas injection practices. The Frontier and ProPublica found over 150 incidents in recent years where oilfield wastewater has gushed from the earth, releasing toxic chemicals — including those that can cause cancer — near homes, onto farmland and into drinking water sources. Reporting by the news organizations also showed that officials at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, have been aware of the risks for years and identified excessively high injection pressures as a primary cause of the toxic releases known as purges. But regulators have done little to address the problem. A commission spokesperson previously told the news outlets it prefers “to lead with a handshake instead of a hammer” and has not fined any company for purges in the last five years. The commission previously noted that the state has taken steps to reduce injection pressures on new wells in recent years and is committed to “doing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.” A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission declined to comment on Boren’s legislation. One of Boren’s bills, SB 1419 , would require oil and gas companies to assess whether the pressure at which they are injecting wastewater is cracking rock layers deep below ground, allowing the toxic fluid to travel for miles. In addition, companies would be required to protect drinking water sources by performing tests to ensure that toxic wastewater is not spreading after being injected underground. Test results would be reported to state regulators, who would be required to investigate any problematic injection wells and potentially lower the pressure at which wastewater is sent down. Another bill from Boren, SB 1474 , would create a fee on oilfield wastewater to pay for groundwater testing, land restoration and well cleanup. The proposed fee of $0.01 per barrel of wastewater produced in the state would generate millions of dollars each year, based on estimates of the amount of wastewater produced in Oklahoma annually. This could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a large oil company. Oil and gas companies could earn deductions on this fee by investing in technology to recycle the wastewater. Sen. Grant Green, the Republican chair of the Energy Committee, declined to comment on Boren’s proposed bills. The Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, which represents smaller oil and gas companies, declined to comment on the draft bills. The Oklahoma Petroleum Alliance did not respond to a request for comment. Boren’s bills, including SB 1472 , also aim to protect property owners who have oil and gas operations on their land. In Oklahoma, landowners may not necessarily own the oil and gas that lies beneath their tract of land. Boren’s proposed legislation would bring greater transparency by requiring companies to alert landowners before wells on their property are sold. This is important because old wells with declining production are often sold to increasingly undercapitalized companies that lack the means to pay for cleanup. When these companies go bankrupt, cleanup costs often fall on taxpayers, while landowners must endure the presence of these wells — and the pollution risk they pose — on their properties. Unplugged wells abandoned by the industry can leak toxic chemicals into local groundwater, while spewing huge volumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Boren said that right now landowners often learn that the wells on their land have changed hands when “a new logo appears on the gate.” Two of Boren’s bills address the financial ability of oil and gas companies to plug and clean up wells involved in a sale. One of them, SB 1419 , would empower landowners to challenge pending sales when companies selling or buying the wells appear to lack the means to plug them when they are no longer profitable. The other bill, SB 1418 , would require state regulators to establish a process to investigate a buyer’s financial capacity to meet plugging and cleanup requirements before a sale is finalized. The legislation would call on regulators to block sales when the seller is “insolvent, financially distressed, or subject to foreclosure.” Last year, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill — sponsored by Boren and Green — to increase the amount of money companies must set aside to ensure that wells are properly cleaned up. “When you don’t have regulation that can enforce best practices,” Boren said, “you have bad actors looking to make a quick buck and leave the landowner holding the bag.” Help Us Report on the Impact of Oil Field Waste in Oklahoma Toxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground in Oklahoma. For years, residents have filed complaints and struggled to find solutions. We need your help to understand the full scale of the problem. Share Your Experience The post New Bills Seek to Rein In Oil Companies’ Pollution of Oklahoma Groundwater appeared first on ProPublica .

The powerful owners of a payday lending company faced a crisis in March 2021 when their other business, a now-defunct sports gambling operation, was under investigation by Tennessee regulators. The couple, Michael and Tina Hodges, had already turned to Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton in 2014 to create a new triple-digit interest loan called a “Flex Loan.” The couple’s company, Advance Financial, through the Flex Loan, went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars lending to the state’s most financially vulnerable. Now they needed Sexton’s help keeping their fledgling gambling business, Action 247, afloat as it tried to compete with sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings, which were dominating the market in Tennessee and around the country. In many states, regulators try to keep lending and betting separate; Virginia, for example, bans gambling operators from offering loans to customers. But in Tennessee, it’s different. A payday lender and a gambling company can have the same owners and operate out of the same storefronts. From November 2020 through Jan. 16, when Action 247 closed, this was happening. A person could walk into any Advance Financial storefront and borrow up to $4,000 at a 279.5% interest rate. Then, at the same window, the customer could legally tell the store’s employee to deposit cash into an Action 247 account, through which they could gamble the money on something like a football game. Members of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp., which oversaw sports gambling at the time, were concerned by the arrangement and the company, but the agency’s board was prevented from doing anything about it by its attorney in January 2021. Two months later, the board attempted to assert its power over Action 247 by suspending its license for violations related to its failure to ensure that customers adhered to state gambling laws; ultimately, Action 247 went to court, where a judge lifted the suspension but allowed the agency to continue its investigation. That’s when Sexton stepped in. The Hodges own the majority of both Action 247 and Advance Financial. The payday lender is one of the largest donors to Sexton and his political action committee, giving around $105,000 over the past decade. ProPublica and the Tennessee Lookout previously reported how, after creating the new type of payday loan, Advance has gone on to sue more than 110,000 Tennesseans , making the company one of the single largest plaintiffs in the state. Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton told a lottery board official he was not happy with the panel’s decision to suspend the online sportsbook Action 247; weeks later, he helped pass a bill to remove lottery oversight. John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout Through Action, the Hodges also brought in dozens of investors, including two with political ties to Sexton and other powerful state lawmakers, according to an investor document obtained by the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica. A month after the suspension, Sexton met with two members of the lottery board. The legislator “made it clear he was not happy” with the decision to suspend Action 247, said Susan Lanigan, the chair of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp.’s board at the time. When it appeared lottery officials weren’t going to drop their ongoing investigation into Action, Sexton pushed through legislation to remove the board’s control over sports betting. Less than a month after the closed-door meeting with Lanigan, the state lottery was out of sports gaming and a new regulator, over whom members of the legislature could wield more control, was in. Sexton responded to the news outlets’ questions in a statement in which he said that creating the new regulatory body was a policy decision that included members of the lottery. After the lottery lost control of sports gambling, it ended the investigation into Action. The company survived, but as one of the smallest sportsbooks in Tennessee. National brands have dominated sports betting in the state. Action announced on its website on Jan. 16 that it was shutting down. Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial and a onetime lobbyist for Action 247, sent a statement from Tina Hodges, who said, “The current landscape for state-licensed online sports gambling in the United States has proven to be unviable and unprofitable for all operators in the industry.” The Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica have been investigating Advance and Action for over a year. In December 2025, a reporter sent Earnest and Sexton a list of questions about the company’s politically tied investors and the connections between the gambling and lending businesses. Sexton said, in an emailed statement, “I don’t keep up with each and every investment of people I know.” Earnest didn’t respond to the specific questions. Earnest, when asked about the lottery investigation, said by email that the agency “was obviously not up to the task” of regulating sports betting. With Action’s closure, no payday lender is tied to a gambling company, but under Tennessee law it’s still allowed. Brianne Doura-Schawohl, the former legislative director for the gambling harm-reduction advocacy organization National Council on Problem Gambling, said the mixing of high-interest lending and gambling is problematic because studies show people with a gambling addiction are more likely to struggle with their financial decisions and to borrow money they can’t afford to pay back through products like payday loans. Doura-Schawohl said no other state had a scenario where a high-interest lender owns a gambling operation and can use its storefronts to attract customers. “It’s just really unhealthy and, frankly, predatory,” she said. In Tennessee, however, Advance Financial has around 80 storefronts, and Action 247 had operations at all of them for over six years. An Advance Financial store in Sparta, Tennessee, also advertises Action Pay, a money transfer service from sportsbook Action 247, which announced it was shutting down on Jan. 16. Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica “We Were Alarmed” In April 2020, the Tennessee lottery board opened applications for businesses to apply for licenses to run online sports betting operations. Action 247 had been founded a year earlier, the day after lawmakers legalized sports betting, hoping to be one of the first companies to enter the new business. All companies seeking a sports betting license were required to undergo vetting before receiving approval, and during that process, Lanigan said lottery officials believed at the time that Action would operate independently of Advance. Regulators approved Action’s license, and the company launched its online sports betting operations in November and began offering all Advance Financial stores as a place to deposit into or cash out of an Action betting account. At the time, Tennessee law said nothing about payday lenders working with betting companies. The lottery had no rules banning the practice. But in its regulations of lottery and scratch tickets, it prevented stores like Advance from selling the products, acknowledging the dangers of mixing lending and that form of gambling. But almost two weeks after the launch of online sports betting, regulators grew concerned. A gambling investigator for the lottery, working off a tip, entered an Advance store in Nashville and found brochures advertising Action 247. “Action 24/7 is the first locally owned and operated sports book in Tennessee, offering convenient cash deposits and withdrawals,” the brochures read. “It’s so easy. For a $2 fee, any Advance Financial store location can help you withdraw your cash or load your account.” Gambling investigators photographed the Action 247 brochures they found in an Advance Financial store in Nashville in November 2020. Obtained by Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica With the brochure in hand, officials began drafting a violation notice. Regulators emailed Tina Hodges in December 2020, asserting that the company was using Advance as an “unregistered vendor” and asking her to explain how the companies were working together. “It is evident that our licensing decision may have been based on an incomplete picture of your business model,” said lottery officials in the notice. At a January 2021 meeting, the lottery board learned from its attorney that there was no law specifically banning the Action and Advance arrangement. “We were alarmed,” said Lanigan, the chair at the time. Lanigan made it clear at the meeting that the lottery board itself couldn’t stop the practice. But regulators continued to look into the company, finding it lacked proper internal controls to enforce the state’s gambling laws. By March 2021, the lottery board took the regulators’ recommendations to suspend the company until it could fix them. A week later, a judge ruled the company should remain in business while the investigation continued. But now lottery officials had grabbed the attention of Sexton. In March 2021 — the same month that the board suspended the Action 247 operations — legislation Sexton co-sponsored to remove the lottery board’s control of online sports betting entirely received its first committee hearing in the state House. In 2021, Sexton was two years into his position as the state’s most powerful legislative official, and his rise had been in part aided by campaign donations from the Hodges. The steps he took to remove the regulators stood to help not just the couple but also some politically connected investors in Action 247, according to an investor document. One of them was John “Chip” Saltsman, who took the job as Sexton’s senior campaign adviser when he became speaker in 2019. The other was Ward Baker, a campaign adviser for Tennessee’s two U.S. senators and the state Senate majority leader. Saltsman initially invested $150,000 and Baker $100,000, but Advance’s owners had returned some of the investment, leaving Saltsman with $18,000 invested in the company and Baker with $12,000. Saltsman and Baker did not respond to calls, texts and questions sent by the news outlets. Sexton, in an emailed statement, said: “Despite what you are insinuating, my focus and decisions remain on the issues that matter to our state, our communities and to Tennesseans. My team manages campaign logistics, provides transparency and ensures compliance to campaign laws.” In April, as Sexton’s bill moved through the state legislature, Lanigan, the lottery board chair, and William Carver, the vice chair, met with Sexton. Lanigan said she came to the meeting expecting a thorough conversation about the future of sports betting and what regulatory body should oversee it. Instead, she said, Sexton only wanted to talk about the suspension of Action 247 and his frustration at lottery officials. Taken aback, she resigned shortly after the meeting. In May 2021, in the final days of the legislative session, Sexton pushed his legislation through. When Tennessee passed its law giving the lottery control of sports betting and oversight of a sports wagering advisory council, Sexton wasn’t the House speaker. Two years later, at Sexton’s behest, lawmakers reversed this decision by creating a sports-betting-specific agency that, according to Doura-Schawohl, doesn’t exist in any other state. In his emailed statement, Sexton said that some members of the sports wagering advisory council “had serious issues” with how the lottery was conducting business when it came to sports betting. He said that the decision to create the new entity happened “after much discussion and deliberation with board members.” William Orgel, a member of the sports wagering advisory council since 2019 and current chair of the new body, said the council doesn’t involve itself in legislative policy, adding if the lawmakers thought a new agency was necessary, the panel would “say fine.” “I believe our body has been pretty hands-off, at least I have,” Orgel said. “I’m not in there trying to make or lobby for the rules or policy, and I’ve never heard of anyone else doing that either.” While Sexton was working on removing the lottery’s control, former Democratic state Rep. Darren Jernigan of Nashville said he saw the news of Advance and Action’s co-mingling and decided to propose a law to ban it. Jernigan found a Republican sponsor in the state Senate and built a bipartisan coalition of nearly one-third of the state’s House members to co-sponsor the bill. Jernigan said that the legislation was a “no-brainer.” The American Gaming Association reported in July 2025 that 35 of the 38 states that have legalized gambling, plus Washington, D.C., have limits on gaming operators allowing bettors to use borrowed money. This includes Tennessee, where lawmakers have barred gamblers from using a credit card to load money into an account. Jernigan told the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica he thought it was dangerous to put any type of gambling operations in places that also offer quick, high-interest loans. “There was no way to verify if someone was borrowing and betting the money away,” Jernigan said. Former state Rep. Darren Jernigan, a Democrat, proposed legislation to ban the use of payday lending stores for betting services, but it failed in 2021. George Walker IV/AP Once the bill was moving, however, the lobbying started. Jernigan said Earnest, the Advance vice president, working on behalf of both Hodges-owned companies as a lobbyist, went around trying to persuade his co-sponsors to drop their support of the bill. Former state Rep. Sam Whitson, a Republican, said the lobbyist approached him in an effort to get him to withdraw his backing. The bill faced delay after delay in getting out of its committee. In April 2021, as the state House’s banking subcommittee looked poised to vote down the legislation, Jernigan withdrew it. Jernigan said that with hindsight he wished he’d tried to bring the bill back up before he left the state House three years later, and that it’s a loophole in the law that needs to be closed. The post How Tennessee’s Speaker of the House Helped Keep a Payday Lender’s Struggling Sports Gambling Company Alive appeared first on ProPublica .

The number of prisoners paroled in Louisiana has plummeted under Gov. Jeff Landry to its lowest point in 20 years, the most visible impact of the “tough on crime” policies he campaigned on. The parole board freed 185 prisoners during Landry’s tenure compared with 858 in the two years before his January 2024 inauguration, a 78% drop, according to a Verite News and ProPublica analysis of data provided by the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole. Hundreds of people who would have been paroled under previous administrations now remain in state prisons with little chance of earning an early release through good behavior or by showing they are fit to reenter society and are unlikely to reoffend. Landry — a former state attorney general and sheriff’s deputy — and his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature overhauled Louisiana’s parole system through a 2024 law that banned parole altogether for anyone convicted after Aug. 1 of that year. The overhaul also impacted the tens of thousands of people incarcerated before that date who must now meet tightened eligibility requirements to be considered for early release: Prisoners need to maintain a clean disciplinary record for three years instead of just one. And they must be deemed to pose a low risk of reoffending through a computerized scoring system, which does not take into account prisoners’ efforts to rehabilitate themselves and was not intended to be used to make individual parole decisions. Louisiana is the only state using such risk scores to automatically ban people from the parole process, according to a previous investigation by ProPublica and Verite News . The cumulative impact of these changes has caused the number of parole applications to dramatically fall. In the two years prior to Landry’s inauguration, the board held 1,785 hearings. That number dropped to 714 in Landry’s two years as governor. The Number of Parole Hearings Dropped to Its Lowest Level in at Least a Decade Under Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry Note: A 2017 Louisiana law expanded parole eligibility for nonviolent offenders to reduce prison crowding, creating a temporary surge in the number of hearings and parolees. Once those prisoners were released, the number eligible for parole declined starting in 2020. Source: Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Lucas Waldron/ProPublica Landry’s approach represents a fundamental shift away from the original intent of the parole system, said defense attorneys, former inmates and civil rights lawyers. The possibility of parole offers an incentive for prisoners to better themselves while behind bars. And the supervision in place for parolees helps them reintegrate in hopes of preventing them from returning to prison. “People who have done everything asked of them and would normally be on a fast track to get parole, to get out and make money and take care of their families, they’re crushed and their families are crushed,” said Jim Boren, president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It creates a sense of despair.” Even those who manage to satisfy all of the new eligibility requirements and make it before the parole board face steeper odds, in part because five of the seven members have now been appointed by Landry. In weighing their decision, Landry has said, parole board members should prioritize the recommendations from crime victims and law enforcement. But critics say that board members have gone further, focusing almost exclusively on parole applicants’ criminal records, sometimes even disregarding the wishes of victims and law enforcement when they support prisoners’ early release. In August, Jessie Soileau begged for the release of her son, Ray, before the five-person panel hearing his parole case. He was approaching the final years of his 14-year sentence for punching her in the eye and then fighting the police as they attempted to arrest him, among earlier crimes. She told the board members she needed her son’s help because she’s suffering from a host of health issues and only has one leg. “I try to do the best I can alone, but I can’t do it by myself,” she said. “Ray is the one that helps me out.” Ray Soileau told the board he was off his medication on the day of his arrest and promised that he wouldn’t get in trouble anymore. “I learned my lesson,” he said, “to obey my mother and to obey the laws of the system.” Caleb Semien, assistant police chief of the Mamou Police Department whose officers arrested Soileau, has known him for 24 years and agreed he should be freed. Semien told the board Soileau has attended church faithfully while incarcerated and vouched for him as “just all around a good guy.” The testimonies helped sway four of the five board members, including two appointed by Landry, to vote to parole Soileau. But another Landry appointee, Carolyn Stapleton, who worked in victims services in law enforcement for 20 years before retiring, said she considered Soileau a danger to his family and rejected his application despite the endorsement from police and his mother’s pleas. “I know she needs you,” Stapleton told Soileau, “but she doesn’t need that kind of help.” That single no vote was enough to block Soileau’s release. And instead of being eligible to reapply for parole again in two years, as had been the case before the new law, Soileau must now wait five years. Verite News and ProPublica could not reach Jessie Soileau; a family member said she lives in a nursing home but did not know where. Semien did not respond to calls for comment. Landry, in pushing for a crackdown on parole, said “misguided post-conviction programs” return “un-reformed, un-repentant and violent criminals to our neighborhoods,” causing violent crime to rise and making communities less safe. “Those being released come back into the system again and again,” he said in a speech kicking off a special legislative session on crime weeks after his inauguration. In fact, people released at the end of their sentences had a five-year recidivism rate that is nearly twice as high as those released on parole — 40.3% versus 22.2%, according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections’ 2023 annual report , the latest year for which data is available. Landry’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Gov. Jeff Landry and his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature overhauled Louisiana’s parole system through a 2024 law that banned parole altogether for anyone convicted after Aug. 1 of that year. Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate via AP, Pool The new law also requires a unanimous vote for anyone seeking release. Previously, prisoners could be paroled by a majority vote depending on the crime for which they were convicted and as long as they met certain rehabilitative benchmarks. “Lawmakers expanded this requirement to ensure that parole is granted only when there is full agreement that release will not jeopardize public safety,” said Francis M. Abbott, executive director of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, in a statement. Board members are randomly assigned to hear parole cases, typically serving on three-person panels. A five-member panel is required when an inmate has been convicted of a violent crime against a police officer or in some cases involving life sentences. (That was the case with Ray Soileau, whose parole also would have required a unanimous vote prior to the Landry administration because his conviction involved the assault of a law enforcement officer.) Two of Landry’s five appointees, including Stapleton, have been the least likely of the current board to grant parole, having voted to do so in only about 21% of cases. By contrast, board chair Sheryl Ranatza, who had been appointed by Landry’s Democratic predecessor, John Bel Edwards, voted to release prisoners at nearly twice that rate. Abbott said the recent decline in the number of parole hearings and approvals can be attributed to a number of factors — not just the legislative changes enacted in 2024. Edwards pushed through a series of laws passed by a bipartisan Legislature in 2017 that were designed to reduce the state’s prison population — and save money — by expanding the pool of people eligible for release, among other changes. That led to a rise in the number of hearings held and prisoners paroled. Once that pool was depleted, the number of parolees began to drop. As a result, Abbott said, people convicted of violent crimes and sex offenses now make up a higher percentage of the state’s prison population. “This equates to more complex cases being considered by the Committee on Parole,” Abbott said in a statement. “The reforms of 2024 were designed by the Louisiana Legislature and reflect the will of the citizens of Louisiana.” Steve Prator, a former police chief and sheriff in northern Louisiana, is the other Landry parole board appointee least likely to grant parole. As Caddo Parish sheriff in 2017, Prator voiced his objections to Edwards’ criminal justice legislation. He said it would result in the release of “good” prisoners whom prisons depended on “to wash cars, to change oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that, where we save money.” Critics, including civil rights attorneys, accused Prator of supporting the exploitation of inmates for his own benefit and said he was therefore unfit to serve on the parole board. Neither Stapleton nor Prator responded to requests for comment. Abbott previously told Verite News and ProPublica that board policy prohibits current board members from speaking to the media. Verite News and ProPublica reached out to several defense attorneys who have represented prisoners before the parole board in the past two years and none would speak on the record for fear that anything negative said about the board would hurt their clients. Two who agreed to comment on the condition of anonymity said Landry’s overhaul of the board has forced defense attorneys to change how they make a case for parole. Prior to Landry’s changes to parole, the defense attorneys said they highlighted their clients’ accomplishments in prison to the board: earning a college degree, attending Bible school, repairing relationships with their children. But “none of that crap matters now,” said one of the defense attorneys in southeast Louisiana, adding that the only factors the board cares about now is the crime detailed in the police report and victim opposition. “What we do now is damage control.” It is rare for prisoners to appear before the parole board with an attorney, but those who did were more likely to be granted early release prior to Landry’s push to make it harder for prisoners to be freed, according to parole experts. Before Landry, the two attorneys estimated that they secured parole for most of their eligible clients. Since the seating of the new board, they haven’t won parole for any. Overall, during Landry’s two years in office, just over a quarter of those eligible have been paroled compared with about half the prisoners who appeared before the parole board prior to his inauguration, according to annual parole rates. The Rate That Parole Was Granted Decreased During Landry’s Term Source: Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Lucas Waldron/ProPublica Over the past five years, more than two dozen states have been paroling fewer people, a trend attributed, in part, to parole boards being more cautious for fear of public backlash should a parolee commit a violent crime, according to Leah Wang, a senior research analyst with the Prison Policy Initiative and author of an October report on how parole decisions are made . In addition, some states have passed new laws that put parole eligibility further out of reach, but none have been as aggressive as Louisiana , which eliminated parole entirely for nearly all newly incarcerated prisoners. While 17 states have abolished parole, Louisiana is the first in 24 years to do so. “No one is doing it well,” Wang said. “But Louisiana is an outlier. It’s a disaster.” Civil rights attorneys and prison reform advocates say Landry’s changes represent a return to the failed policies of the past, which they said resulted in violent, overcrowded prisons and did not make a dent in the state’s high crime rates. “Tough on crime doesn’t work,” said Pearl Wise, who was appointed to the parole board by Edwards and served from 2016 until 2023. “All it produces is mass incarceration, which costs us more than rehabilitating the individual and making them taxpayers, not tax burdens.” James Austin, a national corrections policy expert, estimates that the state’s prison population will nearly double in six years — from about 28,000 to about 55,800 — because of recent policy changes. Since Landry took office, the prison population has increased by about 1,700 inmates, but there is not enough data to show whether this is a permanent trend. It costs about $37,000 per year to house a single inmate in a state prison compared with about $2,200 a year for parole supervision. One of those prisoners who will remain incarcerated because of Landry’s policies is Tyrone Charles, who was 20 years old when he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced in 1995 to 50 years in prison as a repeat offender. When Charles appeared before the parole board in July at the age of 53, he told the three-member panel that he had learned the value of his own life — and that of others — during his three decades in prison. “I would like to apologize to my victim today, to their family,” Charles said. “I apologize to the police. I apologize to my family, to all the people that I hurt, for the pain and suffering that I caused as a young man. Now, I’m older, I know the meaning of love, to just be a loving person.” Terrance Winn, who runs a Shreveport-based nonprofit offering services to people released from prison, befriended Charles while they were both serving time in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He told the board he would provide Charles with whatever was necessary, including housing and employment, to ensure his post-prison life was a success. Prator, whose detectives investigated the robbery when he was Shreveport police chief, cast the lone no vote. Winn, in a recent interview, said he was not surprised by Prator’s denial. In the three years prior to Landry’s inauguration, 17 of the 18 people Winn advocated for during that time were granted parole. Since Landry became governor, Winn said the outcome has flipped, with 10 denied and only two approved. “With this new parole board,” he said, “you got to expect the worst.” The post Louisiana Paroles Its Lowest Number of Prisoners in 20 Years Under Gov. Jeff Landry appeared first on ProPublica .

The Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records and interviews with six agency staffers. The plan was presented to DOT staff last month at a demonstration of AI’s “potential to revolutionize the way we draft rulemakings,” agency attorney Daniel Cohen wrote to colleagues. The demonstration, Cohen wrote, would showcase “exciting new AI tools available to DOT rule writers to help us do our job better and faster.” Discussion of the plan continued among agency leadership last week, according to meeting notes reviewed by ProPublica. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said at that meeting that President Donald Trump is “very excited about this initiative.” Zerzan seemed to suggest that the DOT was at the vanguard of a broader federal effort, calling the department the “point of the spear” and “the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules.” Zerzan appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality. “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” he said, according to the meeting notes. “We want good enough.” Zerzan added, “We’re flooding the zone.”  These developments have alarmed some at DOT. The agency’s rules touch virtually every facet of transportation safety, including regulations that keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding and stop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails. Why, some staffers wondered, would the federal government outsource the writing of such critical standards to a nascent technology notorious for making mistakes? The answer from the plan’s boosters is simple: speed. Writing and revising complex federal regulations can take months, sometimes years. But, with DOT’s version of Google Gemini, employees could generate a proposed rule in a matter of minutes or even seconds, two DOT staffers who attended the December demonstration remembered the presenter saying. In any case, most of what goes into the preambles of DOT regulatory documents is just “word salad,” one staffer recalled the presenter saying. Google Gemini can do word salad. Zerzan reiterated the ambition to accelerate rulemaking with AI at the meeting last week. The goal is to dramatically compress the timeline in which transportation regulations are produced, such that they could go from idea to complete draft ready for review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in just 30 days, he said. That should be possible, he said, because “it shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to get a draft rule out of Gemini.” The DOT plan, which has not previously been reported, represents a new front in the Trump administration’s campaign to incorporate artificial intelligence into the work of the federal government. This administration is not the first to use AI; federal agencies have been gradually stitching the technology into their work for years , including to translate documents, analyze data and categorize public comments, among other uses . But the current administration has been particularly enthusiastic about the technology. Trump released multiple executive orders in support of AI last year. In April, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought circulated a memo calling for the acceleration of its use by the federal government. Three months later, the administration released an “ AI Action Plan ” that contained a similar directive. None of those documents, however, called explicitly for using AI to write regulations, as DOT is now planning to do. Those plans are already in motion. The department has used AI to draft a still-unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule, according to a DOT staffer briefed on the matter. Skeptics say that so-called large language models such as Gemini and ChatGPT shouldn’t be trusted with the complicated and consequential responsibilities of governance, given that those models are prone to error and incapable of human reasoning . But proponents see AI as a way to automate mindless tasks and wring efficiencies out of a slow-moving federal bureaucracy. Such optimism was on display in a windowless conference room in Northern Virginia earlier this month, where federal technology officials, convened at an AI summit, discussed adopting an “AI culture” in government and “upskilling” the federal workforce to use the technology. Those federal representatives included Justin Ubert, division chief for cybersecurity and operations at DOT’s Federal Transit Administration, who spoke on a panel about the Transportation Department’s plans for “fast adoption” of artificial intelligence. Many people see humans as a “choke point” that slows down AI, he noted. But eventually, Ubert predicted, humans will fall back into merely an oversight role, monitoring “AI-to-AI interactions.” Ubert declined to speak to ProPublica on the record. A similarly sanguine attitude about the potential of AI permeated the presentation at DOT in December, which was attended by more than 100 DOT employees, including division heads, high-ranking attorneys and civil servants from rulemaking offices. Brimming with enthusiasm, the presenter told them that Gemini can handle 80% to 90% of the work of writing regulations, while DOT staffers could do the rest, one attendee recalled the presenter saying. To illustrate this, the presenter asked for a suggestion from the audience of a topic on which DOT may have to write a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a public filing that lays out an agency’s plans to introduce a new regulation or change an existing one. He then plugged the topic keywords into Gemini, which produced a document resembling a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. It appeared, however, to be missing the actual text that goes into the Code of Federal Regulations, one staffer recalled. The presenter expressed little concern that the regulatory documents produced by AI could contain so-called hallucinations — erroneous text that is frequently generated by large language models such as Gemini — according to three people present. In any case, that’s where DOT’s staff would come in, he said. “It seemed like his vision of the future of rulemaking at DOT is that our jobs would be to proofread this machine product,” one employee said. “He was very excited.” (Attendees could not clearly recall the name of the lead presenter, but three said they believed it was Brian Brotsos, the agency’s acting chief AI officer. Brotsos declined to comment, referring questions to the DOT press office.) A spokesperson for the DOT did not respond to a request for comment; Cohen and Zerzan also did not respond to messages seeking comment. A Google spokesperson did not provide a comment. The December presentation left some DOT staffers deeply skeptical. Rulemaking is intricate work, they said, requiring expertise in the subject at hand as well as in existing statutes, regulations and case law. Mistakes or oversights in DOT regulations could lead to lawsuits or even injuries and deaths in the transportation system. Some rule writers have decades of experience. But all that seemed to go ignored by the presenter, attendees said. “It seems wildly irresponsible,” said one, who, like the others, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.  Mike Horton, DOT’s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer, criticized the plan to use Gemini to write regulations, comparing it to “having a high school intern that’s doing your rulemaking.” (He said the plan was not in the works when he left the agency in August.) Noting the life-or-death stakes of transportation safety regulations, Horton said the agency’s leaders “want to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.” Academics and researchers who track the use of AI in government expressed mixed opinions about the DOT plan. If agency rule writers use the technology as a sort of research assistant with plenty of supervision and transparency, it could be useful and save time. But if they cede too much responsibility to AI, that could lead to deficiencies in critical regulations and run afoul of a requirement that federal rules be built on reasoned decision-making. “Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn’t mean that those words add up to a high-quality government decision,” said Bridget Dooling, a professor at Ohio State University who studies administrative law. “It’s so tempting to try to figure out how to use these tools, and I think it would make sense to try. But I think it should be done with a lot of skepticism.” Ben Winters, the AI and privacy director at the Consumer Federation of America, said the plan was especially problematic given the exodus of subject-matter experts from government as a result of the administration’s cuts to the federal workforce last year. DOT has had a net loss of nearly 4,000 of its 57,000 employees since Trump returned to the White House, including more than 100 attorneys, federal data shows . Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was a major proponent of AI adoption in government. In July, The Washington Post reported on a leaked DOGE presentation that called for using AI to eliminate half of all federal regulations, and to do so in part by having AI draft regulatory documents. “Writing is automated,” the presentation read. DOGE’s AI program “automatically drafts all submission documents for attorneys to edit.” DOGE and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The White House did not answer a question about whether the administration is planning to use AI in rulemaking at other agencies as well. Four top technology officials in the administration said they were not aware of any such plan. As for DOT’s “point of the spear” claim, two of those officials expressed skepticism. “There’s a lot of posturing of, ‘We want to seem like a leader in federal AI adoption,’” one said. “I think it’s very much a marketing thing.” The post Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence appeared first on ProPublica .

Washington state has launched a sweeping effort to speed up construction of renewable energy projects, prompted by reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica that chronicled how the state came to rank dead last in the nation for renewable energy growth . Washington’s Department of Commerce, which works on state energy policy, has offered up state employees to help the federal Bonneville Power Administration process its backlog of renewable energy projects — though it remains uncertain whether the agency will accept the offer. Bonneville, which owns 75% of the Northwest’s power grid, must sign off before wind and solar developers who wish to connect to its grid can break ground.  Meanwhile, four state agencies have recommended that Washington’s Legislature provide incentives for utilities to upgrade transmission lines, plan out “microgrid” energy projects that don’t need to connect to Bonneville’s power lines and create a new state agency that would plan and potentially pay for major new transmission corridors. A bill to create such an authority had a hearing on Jan 21.  The Commerce Department, Department of Ecology, Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council and Utilities and Transportation Commission are also meeting regularly to diagnose what’s holding up more than a dozen high-priority wind, solar and energy storage projects that could make an outsize difference.  Joe Nguyễn, who recently stepped down as the state’s commerce director, said there’s added urgency to get the work done since OPB and ProPublica last year showed that other states like Iowa and Texas have made far more progress than Washington. “We’re forcing these tough conversations that have never been done before,” Nguyễn, a former state senator who helped pass Washington’s law setting a deadline to go carbon-free, said during a recent public forum. He spoke at the panel just before leaving the state Commerce Department in January to take a job as head of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.  “We probably have to modify some policies, we’re going to amend some things, we have to make strategic investments, but I think that’s a good thing,” Nguyễn said at the forum. “I’m not daunted by the task.” Under Bonneville, projects face longer odds of successfully connecting to the electrical grid than anywhere else in the country, OPB and ProPublica found. The federal agency weighs how many new transmission lines and substations will be needed to carry the added load, and it has historically been slow to pay for such upgrades, renewable energy advocates have said. Often the burden falls on the builders of the wind and solar projects. Washington and Oregon lawmakers failed to account for this obstacle when they required electric utilities to phase out fossil fuels. Combined with rapid growth in electricity demand from new data centers powering artificial intelligence , studies now predict rolling blackouts in the Pacific Northwest within the next five years. Inspired by OPB and ProPublica’s reporting, the Seattle nonprofit Clean & Prosperous published a report this month identifying energy high-potential projects that could generate enough power for 7 million homes and contribute $195 billion to the state’s economy if built by 2030. Kevin Tempest, research director for Clean & Prosperous, said the fact that Washington ranked 50th nationally for green power growth was poorly understood until the recent news coverage. “I don’t think that we were aware of just how stark it was,” said Tempest, whose group advocates for “entrepreneurial approaches” to eliminating fossil fuels and promoting economic growth. “So that really opened our eyes and, I think, accelerated a lot of conversations.” Separately, in Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed two executive orders intended to speed up the construction of energy projects. Kotek, too, said the news reports helped galvanize policymakers. Nguyễn told OPB and ProPublica their reporting made him realize “the people who talk about clean energy are not actually doing it.” But now, he said, “Washington state’s desperately trying.” “Things That We Can Control” Most of the high-priority projects identified by the state and by Clean & Prosperous are waiting for approval to connect to Bonneville’s substations and transmission lines so that developers move toward construction. The federal agency’s review process historically has been sluggish and often puts the onus on a single energy developer to invest tens of millions of dollars in upgrades or else wait until another developer comes along to shoulder some of the cost. In addition, state officials in Oregon and Washington must also sign off on the location planned for new power lines and wind or solar farms — a process with its own bottlenecks. “There are a myriad of reasons why projects are not happening,” Tempest said. “It’s different for each case.” But he said across all projects, Bonneville is “a common feature for some of the new facilities not breaking ground.” Bonneville spokesperson Kevin Wingert said in an email that the agency has implemented several reforms over the past year to enable faster connections to its grid. For example, the agency began studying clusters of projects collectively, based on their readiness, and expects its first study to be done at the end of the month. Wingert said the agency has identified 7 gigawatts worth of projects — roughly the capacity of Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam, Washington’s largest power plant — that it says it’s on pace to have online within five years. It expects to have more than double that amount connected and energized by 2035. In the near term, the state is focusing on grid improvements to the transmission system it can make without Bonneville, according to Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington Department of Ecology. He said Washington will work to help projects connect to some part of the roughly 25% of the region’s grid that is operated by investor-owned and public utilities. “I think the point is for us in Washington trying to find, as we wait for BPA, who’s years behind, what are the other things that we can control that we should be prioritizing and trying to move forward?” Sixkiller said. Kurt Beckett, chair of Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, which issues site permits for energy projects, said localized improvements that can be made outside of Bonneville’s grid are cheaper and will have tangible, immediate results. They also have the benefit of “buying time for the bigger, harder upgrades that Bonneville’s in charge of.” Bonneville says it plans to spend $5 billion on nearly two dozen transmission line and substation improvements, but many of those projects are years away with no firm deadline. What’s within Washington’s control in the near term is to streamline state permitting of projects that have received or don’t need Bonneville’s approval. The need was highlighted by the passage last year of President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will phase out key federal energy tax credits and sets a July 4 deadline for projects to break ground. The credits cover as much as 50% of construction costs for most solar and wind farms. More than 200 wind, solar and battery storage projects theoretically could meet the deadline “should development processes improve,” Clean & Prosperous concluded in its report. The group said it was a reference to both Bonneville’s role and the state’s. Sixkiller said Washington leaders are prioritizing a smaller list of 19 proposed projects they think have the best chance of beating the July deadline. In some cases, the developers already have a connection agreement with Bonneville in place. In two, the projects will connect to power lines run by a utility. An Offer of Help In addition to actions taken by state agencies, Washington lawmakers are considering a bill that would ease the state’s reliance on Bonneville to build new power lines. That would come in the form of a state transmission authority — a new state agency in charge of planning transmission routes, acquiring land and working with developers to build new lines. It could also eventually pay for projects. Washington lawmakers are calling for a report on what financing tools, such as the ability to issue bonds, the new transmission authority will need. The bill has support from environmental groups, labor unions and energy developers. However, lobbyists for large industrial energy consumers and for Bonneville’s public utility customers opposed the bill, saying they supported the intention to build more transmission but wanted the state to focus on relaxing its permitting requirements to let utilities solve the problem. For the time being, state officials told OPB and ProPublica they are working to shore up Bonneville’s ability to do the work that the region’s grid needs. Beckett said he hopes the state can help Bonneville with the agency’s self-imposed goal of cutting the average time a project spends in the queue from 15 years down to five or six. Agencies have offered Bonneville some of their staff to help its analysts complete grid connection studies, which Washington officials said makes sense because the state in many cases is already reviewing the same projects that are awaiting the federal agency’s permission to connect. Bonneville hasn’t said yes yet. Wingert said Bonneville’s interconnection studies have “numerous technical and regulatory requirements” that make them “inappropriate or infeasible” for the state to conduct on BPA’s behalf. But, he said, the agency was open to working with the state to speed projects up at some point. “There may be opportunities to coordinate efficiencies between state policies and BPA’s interconnection processes in the future,” Wingert said. Nguyễn said that technical requirements shouldn’t keep Bonneville from accepting the state’s help in vetting projects or analyzing their impact on the grid, and that state employees could help with the less technical aspects of the report if needed. “If you want us to bring you lunch so your analysts can go faster, we will do it,” he said. “That’s the level of seriousness I have about getting transmission built.” The post Our Reporting Showed Washington Ranks Last in Green Energy Growth. Now the State Is Working to Speed It Up. appeared first on ProPublica .

Joann Carl’s dog Rocky, a long-eared, short-legged mix the color of graham crackers, has become Alaska famous since I first met Carl in April. Over the past few months, she’s seen his photo all over Facebook, she said, rescued after Typhoon Halong wiped away more than half the homes in her coastal Alaska Native village of Kipnuk, population 700.   At the Anchorage Daily News, we’re based in Alaska’s largest city but travel as often as we can to small communities like Kipnuk in an attempt to cover a state that’s twice the size of Texas. We try to report more than one story at a time to justify the expense of plane tickets. Flights to a remote village in a small plane cost the same as a trip to New York. But rarely do we have the chance to document a community just before the breaking news arrives.  Maybe you didn’t hear much about the typhoon. It began as a tropical storm, dumping record rainfall in parts of Japan before swirling toward Alaska. By the time it reached our shores, the remnants of the storm still carried enough force to flood two villages, sweeping away homes and leaving as many as three people dead.  I’m writing to you about the storm because photojournalist Marc Lester and I happened to visit Kipnuk shortly before the typhoon. Marc returned to cover the evacuation, providing a look at an Alaska village on the front lines of climate change just before and after the devastation.   The story of destruction in Carl’s hometown, along with the nearby village of Kwigillingok, adds an exclamation point to long-simmering fears about the future of Alaska coastal villages. Which town will be wiped away next? Where will climate refugees live? Should their former homes be rebuilt? If not, what does it mean for the future of these communities?  Emily Schwing, reporting for KYUK public radio in Bethel and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, wrote in May about climate refugees the government helped relocate from the Yup’ik village of Newtok. In November , while covering Alaska’s crumbling public school infrastructure, she wrote how the school in Kipnuk housed hundreds of residents as an emergency shelter during the storm surge from Halong .  When Marc and I first visited that schoolhouse in April, we were reporting on a very different kind of story . Justine Paul, Carl’s son, spent seven years in jail charged with murder in Alaska’s glacially slow justice system, where serious cases can take a decade to resolve. Paul’s case was ultimately dismissed after the evidence against him turned out to be deeply flawed. After struggling with addiction on the streets of Anchorage upon his release, Paul returned to live with Carl in the little Kipnuk house where he grew up. Our visit to their village before the storm gave Marc a chance to document a version of Kipnuk that no longer exists and maybe never will again. Justine Paul leaves Joann Carl’s house after his lunch break from work in April. Marc Lester/ADN Carl, Paul’s mother, cries at her home in Kipnuk in April while describing her son’s situation. Marc Lester/ADN The people we met in the spring were subsequently airlifted to emergency shelter in an evacuation unlike any the state had experienced. They arrived in Bethel via helicopters and small planes. Some stayed in the regional hub. Others were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of a massive Alaska Air National Guard cargo plane bound for Anchorage. Many would end up staying for weeks in Anchorage at a convention center and a sports arena that had been transformed into emergency shelters.  Five days after the storm, Marc toured Kipnuk on the back of an all-terrain vehicle with one of the village’s few holdouts.  The floodwaters had devastated a community that’s been settling into melting permafrost like others on the coast. The central part of the village resembled a collapsed Jenga tower, rectangular homes scattered and strewn, Marc reported. Most were lifted from their pilings by the raging floodwater and deposited elsewhere. Some were surprisingly intact, but muddied, sodden, compromised and unlivable where they came to rest. Gone was the thrum and throttle of normal life we had seen earlier in the year, Marc found, replaced by an eerie vacancy. Zacharias John looks at the devastation left by Halong in Kipnuk on Oct. 17. John decided to stay back and help the few people who remain in the village. Marc Lester/ADN It had taken Carl’s family five hours to travel the three blocks from their house to the makeshift shelter at the school when the storm first hit. Carl’s son Raymond helped elders get over debris on the ground. Pieces of houses washed against the town’s boardwalk. She said the whole village smelled of diesel fuel — spilled stove oil. Villagers had to ration food that had been stored at the schoolhouse for students. “One cracker and a spoonful of hashbrowns” per person, Carl said. Eventually, volunteers salvaged dried Native foods from homes that were still standing: fish, berries, moose meat. “We fed the kids more and the mens that were doing all the work, the rescues,” Carl said.  A volunteer pilot flew Rocky from Kipnuk to safety, she said. “Used her own gas.”  One house floated 15 miles away, Carl said. Bodies from some of Kipnuk’s aboveground graves had been seen near the town’s airport. The storm, whose impacts the Alaska Climate Research Center later linked to global warming, killed 67-year-old Ella Mae Kashatok in Kwigillingok. The home she was in broke loose and floated toward the Bering Sea, state troopers said. Two members of her family, Vernon Pavil, 71, and Chester Kashatok, 41, have not been found. A home came to rest on a riverbank opposite Kipnuk during Halong. Marc Lester/ADN Paul flew to Bethel and then to Togiak, a coastal village 140 miles from Kipnuk that was less impacted by the storms. Carl, who has diabetes, said she evacuated Kipnuk on a Blackhawk helicopter. She sat next to a 2-year-old girl whose name she didn’t know and who was traveling without her parents. Carl made a show of looking out the window and appearing interested in the scenery, she said, to keep the toddler occupied and calm. Carl said Kipnuk’s subsistence culture made the villagers especially well-equipped to survive the aftermath of the storm. Hunters regularly face life-and-death decisions, she said. Starvation times weren’t so long ago. Elders taught everyone to dry and save food. Carl, however, is not likely to be around to experience that way of life in the village anymore. Kipnuk in April 2025. Carl doesn’t know if the village will survive after Halong’s devastation. Marc Lester/ADN Although her home is one of the few that survived — it was built in the late 1970s or early ’80s on pilings moored deep in the tundra — she’s not optimistic about returning to the village full time.  She burst into tears when asked if Kipnuk will exist in the future.  “It’s probably the end,” she said over a recent lunch of Whoppers at an Anchorage Burger King. “It’s a ghost town.” Kids play basketball in Kipnuk in April. Marc Lester/ADN The post Documenting an Alaska Village, Before and After the Storm That Destroyed It appeared first on ProPublica .

The calls came over the span of a single month in 2004, patient after patient with strikingly similar complaints. Some told Oregon psychiatrist James Hancey that their new generic medication for depression had stopped working. Others described unexpected reactions — dizziness, flu-like symptoms and electric shock sensations in the brain. “That started to tell me, ‘This drug is no good,’” Hancey said. “You get all these phone calls where people are saying the exact same thing.” Hancey suspected that the generic was ineffective, and that his patients were suffering from abrupt withdrawal. But he had no easy way to confirm exactly where the pills came from or the safety record of the factory that made them. He began keeping what he called a “no fly” list — dozens of generic drugs he suspected were unsafe or ineffective — based largely on patterns he observed in his patients. Now, he has something else. Last month, ProPublica launched Rx Inspector , a free, searchable tool that allows doctors, researchers and patients to trace a specific generic medication back to its manufacturer and to see the inspection history of the factory. Researchers said they are using the tool to turbocharge work to make the country’s drug supply safer. Health care workers said they are checking factory records before writing prescriptions. And patients say it has helped them understand what may have gone wrong when a medication caused unexplained health problems or didn’t work at all. “This is a godsend to researchers looking to study pharmaceutical manufacturing,” said John Gray, a professor at Ohio State University working on a project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the safety and quality of generic drugs. Although the Food and Drug Administration knows where generic drugs are made and inspects factories around the world, it has never allowed the public to easily see which manufacturer produced which pill or whether the factory had a history of safety and quality violations. Rx Inspector changes that. Drawing on records ProPublica obtained from the FDA, in part by suing the agency in federal court, the tool links nearly 40,000 medications to their original manufacturers and to inspection reports and regulatory actions that were previously difficult, if not impossible, for the public to locate. On Friday, ProPublica published some of the underlying data to GitHub, so that other journalists and researchers can build on our work. The tool is part of a monthslong ProPublica investigation into failures by the FDA to oversee the generic drug industry, particularly foreign factories repeatedly faulted for drug contamination and other quality failures. It is already reshaping how people make decisions. Gray and his team are working to assign generic drugs a quality score based on risk. The goal is to help government purchasers, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, buy medications based on quality, not just cost. Rx Inspector has enabled his team to move faster — researchers can easily look up factory locations and inspection details, he said. Col. Vic Suarez, a retired Army medical supply-chain commander who is collaborating on the project, said he is also using the tool for research aimed at helping new U.S.-based drug companies produce high-quality medication. Health care workers said the tool is changing how they counsel patients. Hancey, the Oregon psychiatrist, said he recently shared Rx Inspector with the training director at his hospital so that residents could use it to investigate generic drugs and develop their own “no fly” lists. He will refine his own list as well, now that he can more easily track the drugmakers behind the generics that concern him most. “Experience has taught me that not all generics are the same,” he said. “And you don’t know who you are dealing with. This will cut down on a lot of the legwork.” Ninety percent of the prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them made overseas. For years, pharmacists and lawmakers have pressed the FDA to require manufacturers to identify themselves on the labels of pill bottles so that consumers and health care workers could learn more about the drugs they use and prescribe. The FDA resisted. The former head of drug safety at the agency told ProPublica that regulators didn’t want to police thousands of companies to ensure they were providing accurate information. The FDA does require companies to disclose manufacturing locations when they apply to sell a generic drug. But it does not publish that information on its website. And while the agency posts some inspection reports online, it routinely redacts the names of generic drugs involved, even when inspectors find serious safety and quality violations. Rx Inspector pulls those threads together. Since the tool’s launch, ProPublica has heard from dozens of readers who used it to look up their own medications. They described feeling empowered, even vindicated, after learning where their drugs were made and, in some cases, discovering long-standing concerns by the FDA about substandard manufacturing. John Beeler, a father of three in Atlanta, used Rx Inspector to learn more about a generic antidepressant that he believes made him sick. Courtesy of John Beeler In Atlanta, 49-year-old John Beeler said he developed headaches and rashes on his sides, upper body and hands after he started taking bupropion, the generic for the brand-name Wellbutrin and among the most widely used antidepressants in the United States. For two exhausting weeks in 2024, Beeler said, he worried: Were his pills making him sick? The FDA has fielded thousands of complaints about some generic versions of the drug, government records show. Testing by independent labs — including a test commissioned by ProPublica — have turned up irregularities in the way the pills dissolve in the body, which can flood patients with too much medication or leave their symptoms untreated. Beeler, a father of three, . asked his doctor to switch him to a different medication. The rashes and headaches cleared up almost immediately. When Beeler later used Rx Inspector, which he found on Reddit, he learned that the pills he had been taking were made in a factory in India cited multiple times by FDA inspectors for poor-quality manufacturing, including for shipping potentially contaminated medication to the U.S. Kate Wagner discovered her generic ADHD drug was made at a factory repeatedly cited by FDA inspectors for safety and quality violations. Courtesy of Kate Wagner Drug safety experts caution that the same manufacturer can produce both good and bad batches, and that patients can react differently to the same drug for reasons unrelated to manufacturing. Doctors and pharmacists advise patients with concerns to talk to their health care providers and to not stop taking medication on their own. Beeler said he has no idea what caused the reaction to his generic bupropion, but having access to information about the factory and its troubles with the FDA would have allowed him to make different choices. “Having somebody say, ‘There’s big differences in the way that certain drugs are manufactured,’ it’s kind of like, I’m not that crazy,” he said. “It would have answered a lot of questions early on.” In Chicago, Kate Wagner, 32, went on a new generic for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year and said she spent two weeks in a stupor, barely able to move. The experience was so disorienting, she stopped taking stimulants altogether even though she had been on them since she was a child. Wagner recently discovered Rx Inspector on X and learned that the generic was made at a U.S. factory found to have manufacturing violations during nine inspections from 2009 to 2022. “I really felt like in my heart that it was just a bad drug,” said Wagner, who writes about architecture . “There’s a difference between an expected side effect and being made sick by medication.” Dawn Levitt had no idea that a generic immunosuppressant that protects her heart came from a troubled factory in India. Katherine Dailey Dawn Levitt can’t take any chances — she relies on a generic drug to protect her fragile heart. She has had two heart transplants since 2006 and takes everolimus, the generic version of the immunosuppressant Zortress, to prevent rejection. When Levitt used Rx Inspector to look up her generic, she learned that it was made in an Indian factory faulted by the FDA for quality and safety lapses, including dirty drugmaking equipment and destroying records related to drug quality. “I felt sick and anxious when I saw the violations,” said Levitt, who lives in Michigan and blogs about her medical journey . She said she quickly made plans to talk with her doctor and transplant team. “I already had to have a second heart transplant,” she said. “This could jeopardize the survival of my heart transplant and my life.” Johanna Staples kisses her husband around 2005, a few years before he died. “I loved my husband with all my heart,” she said. Courtesy of Johanna Staples For Johanna Staples, the costs of poorly made drugs have already been steep. Nineteen years ago, Staples lost her husband, Dennis, in one of the deadliest drug contamination breaches in U.S. history. Before receiving dialysis for complications from Type 2 diabetes, Dennis was given a dose of heparin, a generic blood thinner used by millions of Americans. Moments later, he collapsed in his chair and never regained consciousness. Investigators later determined that some generic heparin contained a contaminated ingredient from China that could cause severe allergic reactions. Dozens of deaths and hundreds of serious injuries were reported among patients. “I loved my husband with all my heart and dearly miss him every minute of every day with an ache that cannot be dulled or cured,” Staples told a House subcommittee investigating the crisis in 2008. Now 73, Staples takes a few generic medications herself. When she recently used Rx Inspector to look them up, she said she was stunned. Her blood pressure medication was made in China. Last year, FDA inspectors found so many quality violations at the plant that the agency issued a warning letter, a significant enforcement step, and demanded improvements. Staples said it’s distressing to learn that, nearly two decades after her husband’s death, patients and doctors are still often kept in the dark. “I find it so very wrong and alarming that we are not given full disclosure on the meds we are prescribed,” she said. “Nothing has changed.” Read More You can check out the Rx Inspector here . Although we cannot offer medical advice, our reporting team wants to hear from you. Please fill out this form to let us know what you find. We may follow up with future reporting. Look Up Where Your Generic Prescription Drugs Were Made The post “A Godsend”: ProPublica’s Rx Inspector Tool Is Helping People Find Critical Safety Information on Generic Drugs appeared first on ProPublica .

An ethics watchdog group filed a complaint Thursday seeking an investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney — now the No. 2 at the Justice Department — broke federal conflict-of-interest law when he issued a new prosecution policy that benefits the cryptocurrency industry. The complaint comes after a ProPublica investigation revealed last month that Todd Blanche owned at least $159,000 worth of crypto-related assets when he ordered an end to investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges launched during President Joe Biden’s term. Blanche, the deputy attorney general, issued the order in an April memo in which he also eliminated an enforcement team dedicated to looking for crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes. Blanche had previously signed an ethics agreement promising to dump his cryptocurrency within 90 days of his confirmation and not to participate in any matter that could have a “direct and predictable effect on my financial interests in the virtual currency” until his bitcoin and other crypto-related products were sold. Later ethics filings show Blanche divested from the investments more than a month after he issued the memo. Even when he did ultimately get rid of his crypto interests, his ethics records show he did so by transferring them to his adult children and a grandchild, a move ethics experts said is technically legal but at odds with the spirit and intent of the law. In its complaint this week, the Campaign Legal Center asked the Justice Department’s acting inspector general to launch an investigation. The complaint alleged that the evidence suggests that Blanche “blatantly and improperly influenced DOJ’s digital asset prosecution guidelines while standing to financially benefit.” “The public has a right to know that decisions are being made in the public’s best interest and not to benefit a government employee’s financial interests,” Kedric Payne, the organization’s general counsel and senior director of ethics, wrote in the complaint. The inspector general’s office “should investigate and determine whether a criminal violation occurred.” The Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan government watchdog group dedicated to addressing challenges facing democracy in the U.S. Its trustees and staff include Democrats and Republicans, including Trevor Potter, a Republican former chair of the Federal Election Commission, who serves as president of its Board of Trustees. Under the federal conflicts-of-interest statute , government officials are forbidden from taking part in a “particular matter” that can financially benefit them or their immediate family unless they have a special waiver from the government. The penalties range from up to one year in jail or a civil fine of up to $50,000 all the way to as much as five years in prison if someone willfully violates the law. In the complaint, Payne alleged that Blanche’s orders violated the law because they benefited the industry broadly, including his own investments. He estimated that Blanche’s bitcoin alone rose by 34%, to $105,881.53, between when he issued the memo and when he divested. At the time he issued the memo, Blanche also held investments in several other cryptocurrencies, including Solana and Ethereum, and stock holdings in Coinbase. Payne said “strong evidence” of wrongdoing triggered his group’s request for an investigation. “I can’t think of another situation where I’ve seen someone sign an ethics agreement and then take an action that doesn’t comply with the agreement and you can clearly verify that they did it,” said Payne, a former deputy general counsel at the Office of Congressional Ethics and the U.S. Energy Department. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, was Trump’s lead attorney in the Manhattan trial that resulted in his being convicted of 34 felonies stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. Blanche also defended Trump against criminal charges accusing him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election and retaining highly classified documents. (Those two cases were dropped after Trump was reelected president.) Since gaining Senate confirmation on March 5, Blanche has helped lead a remaking of the Department of Justice and made headlines in other ways. As news of Trump’s ties to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein gained momentum last year, Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell , Epstein’s longtime confidante now serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping him sexually abuse underage girls. In his April 7 memo titled “ Ending Regulation by Prosecution ,” Blanche condemned the Biden Justice Department’s tough approach toward crypto as “a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed.” The memo disbanded the agency’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team , which had won several high-profile crypto-related convictions. Blanche said the agency would instead target only the terrorists and drug traffickers who illicitly used crypto, not the platforms that hosted them. “The digital assets industry is critical to the Nation’s economic development and innovation,” Blanche wrote. “President Trump has also made clear that ‘[w]e are going to end the regulatory weaponization against digital assets.’” The market reacted favorably; crypto trading spiked. In an ethics filing he electronically signed in June, Blanche said his bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investments — including Solana, Cardano and Ethereum — “were gifted in their entirety to my grandchild and adult children.” Financial disclosure records don’t provide exact amounts but instead a broad range for the worth of a government official’s investment. At that point, Blanche’s records show his transfers to his family members were worth between $116,000 and $315,000. He said he sold additional crypto-related investments worth between $5,000 and $75,000. The divestment took place in late May and early June, the ethics filing said. The post Complaint Accuses Trump’s Criminal Attorney of “Blatant” Crypto Conflict in His Role at DOJ appeared first on ProPublica .

ProPublica on Friday published never-before-released data connecting generic drugs to the factories that manufactured them. The data powers Rx Inspector , our groundbreaking tool that allows you to find the factories where your generic drugs were made and their Food and Drug Administration inspection track records. The data, which ProPublica created by linking several FDA datasets, has never been made available by the agency before. It will allow anyone to connect prescriptions to the facilities they were manufactured in by linking National Drug Code numbers to FDA Establishment Identifiers of drug manufacturing facilities.  You can access the data on Github here. Academic researchers said the data would contribute significantly to research evaluating the quality and supply of generic drugs. “This bypasses an incredibly time-consuming barrier for people who want to study drugs and anything to do with manufacturing,” said John Gray, a professor at the Ohio State University. Gray and his team are working to assign generic drugs quality scores based on risk. The goal is to help government purchasers, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, buy medications based on quality, not just cost. The data also provides some basic information about each facility, like the country it’s in and the name of the company that registered it. The methods we used to link the FDA’s drug and facility identifiers are complex, and are laid out in our full methodology . To obtain some of the data, ProPublica had to sue the agency.  We know that much of what is represented here is likely incomplete. It is possible the FDA’s information is not up-to-date because, for example, one company acquired another or moved its manufacturing to a different location. However, we believe this is an important first step in shedding light on a process that the agency and drugmakers have sought to keep secret from consumers. We are releasing this data under a Creative Commons license , meaning you may use it for noncommercial purposes as long as you attribute ProPublica and link back to Rx Inspector . Read More Look Up Where Your Generic Prescription Drugs Were Made The post ProPublica Publishes Unreleased Data on the Origins of Generic Prescription Drugs appeared first on ProPublica .

Days into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a cryptocurrency billionaire posted a video on X to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “Please Donald Trump, I need your help,” he said, wearing a flag pin askew and seated awkwardly in an armchair. “I am an American. … Help me come home.”  The speaker, 46-year-old Roger Ver, was in fact no longer a U.S. citizen. Nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early evangelism for digital currency, Ver had renounced his citizenship more than a decade earlier. At the time of his video, Ver was under criminal indictment for millions in tax evasion and living on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His top-flight legal defense team had failed around half a dozen times to persuade the Justice Department to back down. The U.S., considering him a fugitive, was seeking his extradition from Spain, and he was likely looking at prison. Once, prosecutors hoped to make Ver a marquee example amid concerns about widespread cryptocurrency tax evasion. They had spent eight painstaking years working the case. Just nine months after his direct-to-camera appeal, however, Ver and Trump’s new Justice Department leadership cut a remarkable deal to end his prosecution. Ver wouldn’t have to plead guilty or spend a day in prison. Instead, the government accepted a payout of $49.9 million — roughly the size of the tax bill prosecutors said he dodged in the first place — and allowed him to walk away. Ver was able to pull off this coup by taking advantage of a new dynamic inside of Trump’s Department of Justice. A cottage industry of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants with close ties to Trump has sprung up to help people and companies seek leniency, often by arguing they had been victims of political persecution by the Biden administration. In his first year, Trump issued pardons or clemency to dozens of people who were convicted of various forms of white-collar crime, including major donors and political allies . Investigations have been halted. Cases have been dropped.   Within the Justice Department, a select club of Trump’s former personal attorneys have easy access to the top appointees, some of whom also previously represented Trump. It has become a dark joke among career prosecutors to refer to these lawyers as the “Friends of Trump.” The Ver episode, reported in detail here for the first time, reveals the extent to which white-collar criminal enforcement has eroded under the Trump administration. The account is based on interviews with current and former Justice Department officials, case records and conversations with people familiar with his case. Do you have a tip about special access inside the Justice Department or Trump’s White House? Avi Asher-Schapiro can be reached by email at avi.asher.schapiro@propublica.org and by Signal at aaschapiro.20. Molly Redden can be reached by email at molly.redden@propublica.org and by Signal at mollyredden.14. The Trump administration has particularly upended the way tax law violators are handled. Late last year, the administration essentially dissolved the team dedicated to criminal tax enforcement, dividing responsibility among a number of other offices and divisions. Tax prosecutions fell by more than a quarter , and more than a third of the 80 experienced prosecutors working on criminal tax cases have quit.  But even amid this turmoil, Ver’s case stands out. After Ver added several of these new power brokers to his team — most importantly, former Trump attorney Chris Kise — Trump appointees commandeered the case from career prosecutors. One newly installed Justice Department leader who had previously represented Trump’s family questioned his new subordinates on whether tax evasion should be a criminal offense. Ver’s team wielded unusual control over the final deal, down to dictating that the agreement would not include the word “fraud.”  It remains the only tax prosecution the administration has killed outright. Roger Ver in 2018 Paul Yeung/Bloomberg/Getty Images Ver did not reply to an extensive list of questions from ProPublica. In court filings and dealings with the Justice Department, Ver had always denied dodging his tax bill intentionally — a key distinction between a criminal and civil tax violation — and claimed to have relied on the advice of accountants and tax attorneys. “Roger Ver took full responsibility for his gross financial misconduct to the tune of $50 million because this Department of Justice did not shy away from exposing those who cheat the system. The notion that any defendant can buy their way out of accountability under this administration is not founded in reality,” said Natalie Baldassarre, a Justice Department spokesperson. In response to a list of detailed questions, the White House referred ProPublica to the Justice Department.“I know of no cases like this,” said Scott Schumacher, a former tax prosecutor and the director of the graduate program in taxation at the University of Washington. It is nearly unheard of for the department to abandon an indicted criminal case years in the making. “They’re basically saying you can buy your way out of a tax evasion prosecution.” Roger Ver is not a longtime ally of Trump’s or a MAGA loyalist. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014, a day he once called “the happiest day of my entire life.” In the early days of bitcoin, he controlled about 1% of the world’s supply.  Ver is clean-cut and fit — he has a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. In his early 20s, while he was a libertarian activist in California, Ver was sentenced to 10 months in prison for illegally selling explosives on eBay. He’s often characterized that first brush with the law as political persecution by the state. After his release, he left the U.S. for Japan. Ver in Tokyo in 2014 Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg/Getty Images Ver became a fixture in the 2010s on the budding cryptocurrency conference circuit, where he got a kick out of needling government authority and arguing that crypto was the building block of a libertarian utopia. At a 2017 blockchain conference in Aspen, Colorado, Ver announced he had raised $100 million and was seeking a location to create a new “non-country” without any central government. For years, Ver has recommended other wealthy people consider citizenship in the small Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which has no individual income tax. “Bitcoin completely undermines the power of every single government on the entire planet to control the money supply, to tax people’s income to control them in any way,” he told a gathering of anarcho-capitalists in Acapulco, Mexico, in 2016. “It makes it so incredibly easy for people to hide their income or evade taxes.” More than one friend, he said with a smirk, had asked him how to do so: They “say, ‘Roger, I need your help. How do I use bitcoins to avoid paying taxes on it?’” Renouncing U.S. citizenship isn’t a magic get-out-of-tax-free technique. Since 2008, the U.S. has required expatriates with assets above $2 million pay a steep “exit tax” on the appreciation of all their property. In 2024, the Justice Department indicted Ver in one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases. The government accused Ver of lying to the IRS twice. After Ver renounced his citizenship in 2014, he claimed to the IRS that he personally did not own any bitcoin. He would later admit in his deal with the government to owning at least 130,664 bitcoin worth approximately $73.7 million at the time. Then in 2017, the government alleged, Ver tried to conceal the transfer of roughly $240 million in bitcoin from U.S. companies to his personal accounts. In all, the government said he had evaded nearly $50 million in taxes.  Ver’s defense was that his failure to pay taxes arose from a lack of clarity as to how tax law treated emerging cryptocurrency, good-faith accounting errors and reliance on his advisors’ advice. He claimed it was difficult to distinguish between his personal assets and his companies’ holdings and pinpoint what the bitcoin was actually worth. The Biden administration’s Justice Department dismissed this legal argument. Prosecutors had troves of emails that they said showed Ver misleading his own attorneys and tax preparers about the extent of his bitcoin holdings. (Ver’s team accused the government of taking his statements out of context.) The asset tracing in the case was “rock solid,” according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. A jury, prosecutors maintained, was unlikely to buy Ver’s defense that he made a good-faith error. By the time of Trump’s election, Ver had been arrested in Spain and was fighting extradition. He was also the new owner of a sleek $70 million yacht that some law enforcement officials worried he might use to escape on the high seas. In Trump, Ver saw a possible way out. After the 2024 election, he was “barking up every tree,” said his friend Brock Pierce, a fellow ultrawealthy crypto investor who tried to gin up sympathy for Ver in Trump’s orbit. Ver had initially gone the orthodox route of hiring tax attorneys from a prestigious law firm, Steptoe. Like many wealthy people in legal jeopardy, Ver now also launched a media blitz seeking a pardon from the incoming president.“If anybody knows what it’s like to be the victim of lawfare it’s Trump, so I think he’ll be able to see it in this case as well,” Ver said in a December 2024 appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show. On Charlie Kirk’s show, Ver appeared with tape over his mouth with the word “censored” written in red ink. Laura Loomer, the Trump-friendly influencer, began posting that Ver’s prosecution was unfair. Ver paid Trump insider Roger Stone $600,000 to lobby Congress for an end to the tax provision he was accused of violating. A dress at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala in 2024 shows an image of Ver. Adam Gray/AFP/Getty Images Ver’s pardon campaign fizzled. His public pressure campaign — in which he kept comparing himself to Trump — was not landing, according to Pierce. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors — shut up,” his friend recalled saying.  One objection in the White House, according to a person who works on pardons, may have been Ver’s flamboyant rejection of his American citizenship. Less than a week after Trump was inaugurated, Elon Musk weighed in, posting on X, “Roger Ver gave up his US citizenship. No pardon for Ver. Membership has its privileges.” But inside the Justice Department, Ver found an opening. The skeleton key proved to be one of the “Friends of Trump,” a seasoned defense lawyer named Christopher Kise. Kise is a longtime Florida Republican power player who served as the state’s solicitor general and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned a place in Trump’s inner circle as one of the first experienced criminal defenders willing to represent the president after his 2020 election loss. Kise defended Trump in the Justice Department investigation stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and against charges that Trump mishandled classified documents when leaving the White House. Kise had worked shoulder-to-shoulder on Trump’s cases with two lawyers who were now leaders in the Trump 2.0 Justice Department: Todd Blanche, who runs day-to-day operations at the department as deputy attorney general, and his associate deputy attorney general, Ketan Bhirud, who oversaw the criminal tax division prosecuting Ver. Kise reportedly helped select Blanche to join Trump’s legal team in the documents case, and he and Bhirud had both worked for Trump’s family as they fought civil fraud charges brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022.  On Ver’s legal team, Kise worked the phones, pressing his old colleagues to rethink their prosecution against Ver.  Kise scored the legal team’s first big victory in years: a meeting with Bhirud that cut out the career attorneys most familiar with the merits of the case. In that meeting, however, it wasn’t clear that the new Justice Department leadership would be willing to interfere with the trajectory of Ver’s case. While the Trump administration had backed off aggressive enforcement of white-collar crimes writ large, the administration said it was still pursuing most criminal cases that had already been charged . Bhirud initially expressed skepticism that Ver accidentally underpaid his taxes. It was “hard to believe” that a man going by “Bitcoin Jesus” would have no idea how much bitcoin he owned, Bhirud said, according to a person familiar with the case. Bhirud and Blanche did not respond to detailed questions from ProPublica. The Justice Department stuck to its position that either Ver would plead guilty to a crime, or the case would go to trial. But Kise would not stop lobbying his former colleagues to reconsider. Blanche and Bhirud had already demanded that career officials justify the case again and again. Over the course of the summer, Kise wore down the Trump appointees’ zeal for pursuing Ver on criminal charges.  Kise and the law firm of Steptoe did not respond to questions. “While there were meetings and conversations with DOJ, that is not uncommon. The line attorneys remained engaged throughout the process, and the case was ultimately resolved based on the strength of the evidence,” said Bryan Skarlatos, one of Ver’s tax attorneys and a partner at Kostelanetz. It was a chaotic moment at the Justice Department, an institution that Trump had incessantly accused of being “weaponized” against him and his supporters. After Trump took office, the department was flooded with requests to reconsider prosecutions, with defendants claiming the Biden administration had singled them out for political persecution, too. While many cases failed to grab the administration’s attention, Kise got results. Last week, Kise’s client Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian billionaire accused of trying to bribe the former governor of Puerto Rico, received a pardon from Trump. “Every defense attorney is running the ‘weaponization’ play. This guy gets an audience because of who he is, because his name is Chris Kise,” said a person who recently attended a high-level meeting Kise secured to talk the Justice Department down from prosecuting a client. As Kise stepped up the pressure, Ver’s case ate up a significant share of Bhirud’s time, despite his job overseeing more than 1,000 Justice Department attorneys, according to people familiar with the matter. Ordinarily, it would be rare for a political appointee to be so involved, especially to the exclusion of career prosecutors who could weigh in on the merits. Bhirud began to muse to coworkers about whether failure to pay one’s taxes should really be considered a crime. Wasn’t it more of a civil matter? It seemed to a colleague that Bhirud was aware Ver’s advocates could try to elevate the case to the White House. The government ceded ground and offered to take prison time off the table. Eventually, Ver’s team and Bhirud hit on the deal that would baffle criminal tax experts. They agreed on a deferred prosecution agreement that would allow Ver to avoid criminal charges and prison in exchange for a payout and an agreement not to violate any more laws. The government usually reserves such an agreement for lawbreaking corporations to avoid putting large employers out of business — not for fugitive billionaires. By the time fall approached, Kise and Bhirud, with Blanche’s blessing, were negotiating Ver’s extraordinary deal line by line. Once more, career prosecutors were cut out from the negotiations. Ver’s team enjoyed a remarkable ability to dictate terms. They rejected the text of the government’s supposed final offer because it required him to admit to “fraud,” according to a person familiar with the negotiations. In the end, Ver agreed to admit only to a “willful” failure to report and pay taxes on all his bitcoin and turned over the $50 million. The government arrived at that figure in a roundabout manner. It dropped its claim that Ver had lied on his 2017 tax return. The $50 million figure was based on how much he had evaded in taxes in 2014 alone, plus what the government asserted were interest and penalties. In the end, the deal amounted to the sum he allegedly owed in the first place. He never even had to leave Mallorca to appear in a U.S. court. Under any previous administration, convincing the leadership of the tax division to drop an indicted criminal case and accept a monetary penalty instead would be a nonstarter. While the Justice Department settles most tax matters civilly through fines, when prosecutors do charge criminal fraud, their conviction rate is over 90% .  People “always ask you, ‘Can’t I just pay the taxes and it’ll go away?’” said Jack Townsend, a former federal tax prosecutor. “The common answer that everybody gave — until the Trump administration — was that, no, you can’t do that.” When the Justice Department announced the resolution in October, it touted it as a victory. “We are pleased that Mr. Ver has taken responsibility for his past misconduct and satisfied his obligations to the American public,” Bhirud said in the Justice Department’s press release announcing the deferred prosecution agreement. “This resolution sends a clear message: whether you deal in dollars or digital assets, you must file accurate tax returns and pay what you owe.” Inside the Justice Department, the resolution was demoralizing: “He’s admitted he owes money, and we get money, but everything else about it stinks to high heaven,” said a current DOJ official familiar with the case. “We shouldn’t negotiate with people who are fugitives, as if they have power over us.” Among the wealthy targets of white-collar criminal investigations, the Ver affair sent a different message. Lawyers who specialize in that kind of work told ProPublica that more and more clients are asking which of the “Friends of Trump” they should hire. One prominent criminal tax defense lawyer said he would give his clients a copy of Ver’s agreement and tell them, “These are the guys who got this done.” The only one of Ver’s many lawyers to sign it was Christopher Kise. The post How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump” appeared first on ProPublica .

Days into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a cryptocurrency billionaire posted a video on X to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “Please Donald Trump, I need your help,” he said, wearing a flag pin askew and seated awkwardly in an armchair. “I am an American. … Help me come home.”  The speaker, 46-year-old Roger Ver, was in fact no longer a U.S. citizen. Nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early evangelism for digital currency, Ver had renounced his citizenship more than a decade earlier. At the time of his video, Ver was under criminal indictment for millions in tax evasion and living on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His top-flight legal defense team had failed around half a dozen times to persuade the Justice Department to back down. The U.S., considering him a fugitive, was seeking his extradition from Spain, and he was likely looking at prison. Once, prosecutors hoped to make Ver a marquee example amid concerns about widespread cryptocurrency tax evasion. They had spent eight painstaking years working the case. Just nine months after his direct-to-camera appeal, however, Ver and Trump’s new Justice Department leadership cut a remarkable deal to end his prosecution. Ver wouldn’t have to plead guilty or spend a day in prison. Instead, the government accepted a payout of $49.9 million — roughly the size of the tax bill prosecutors said he dodged in the first place — and allowed him to walk away. Ver was able to pull off this coup by taking advantage of a new dynamic inside of Trump’s Department of Justice. A cottage industry of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants with close ties to Trump has sprung up to help people and companies seek leniency, often by arguing they had been victims of political persecution by the Biden administration. In his first year, Trump issued pardons or clemency to dozens of people who were convicted of various forms of white-collar crime, including major donors and political allies . Investigations have been halted. Cases have been dropped.   Within the Justice Department, a select club of Trump’s former personal attorneys have easy access to the top appointees, some of whom also previously represented Trump. It has become a dark joke among career prosecutors to refer to these lawyers as the “Friends of Trump.” The Ver episode, reported in detail here for the first time, reveals the extent to which white-collar criminal enforcement has eroded under the Trump administration. The account is based on interviews with current and former Justice Department officials, case records and conversations with people familiar with his case. Do you have a tip about special access inside the Justice Department or Trump’s White House? Avi Asher-Schapiro can be reached by email at avi.asher.schapiro@propublica.org and by Signal at aaschapiro.20. Molly Redden can be reached by email at molly.redden@propublica.org and by Signal at mollyredden.14. The Trump administration has particularly upended the way tax law violators are handled. Late last year, the administration essentially dissolved the team dedicated to criminal tax enforcement, dividing responsibility among a number of other offices and divisions. Tax prosecutions fell by more than a quarter , and more than a third of the 80 experienced prosecutors working on criminal tax cases have quit.  But even amid this turmoil, Ver’s case stands out. After Ver added several of these new power brokers to his team — most importantly, former Trump attorney Chris Kise — Trump appointees commandeered the case from career prosecutors. One newly installed Justice Department leader who had previously represented Trump’s family questioned his new subordinates on whether tax evasion should be a criminal offense. Ver’s team wielded unusual control over the final deal, down to dictating that the agreement would not include the word “fraud.”  It remains the only tax prosecution the administration has killed outright. Roger Ver in 2018 Paul Yeung/Bloomberg/Getty Images Ver did not reply to an extensive list of questions from ProPublica. In court filings and dealings with the Justice Department, Ver had always denied dodging his tax bill intentionally — a key distinction between a criminal and civil tax violation — and claimed to have relied on the advice of accountants and tax attorneys. “Roger Ver took full responsibility for his gross financial misconduct to the tune of $50 million because this Department of Justice did not shy away from exposing those who cheat the system. The notion that any defendant can buy their way out of accountability under this administration is not founded in reality,” said Natalie Baldassarre, a Justice Department spokesperson. In response to a list of detailed questions, the White House referred ProPublica to the Justice Department.“I know of no cases like this,” said Scott Schumacher, a former tax prosecutor and the director of the graduate program in taxation at the University of Washington. It is nearly unheard of for the department to abandon an indicted criminal case years in the making. “They’re basically saying you can buy your way out of a tax evasion prosecution.” Roger Ver is not a longtime ally of Trump’s or a MAGA loyalist. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014, a day he once called “the happiest day of my entire life.” In the early days of bitcoin, he controlled about 1% of the world’s supply.  Ver is clean-cut and fit — he has a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. In his early 20s, while he was a libertarian activist in California, Ver was sentenced to 10 months in prison for illegally selling explosives on eBay. He’s often characterized that first brush with the law as political persecution by the state. After his release, he left the U.S. for Japan. Ver in Tokyo in 2014 Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg/Getty Images Ver became a fixture in the 2010s on the budding cryptocurrency conference circuit, where he got a kick out of needling government authority and arguing that crypto was the building block of a libertarian utopia. At a 2017 blockchain conference in Aspen, Colorado, Ver announced he had raised $100 million and was seeking a location to create a new “non-country” without any central government. For years, Ver has recommended other wealthy people consider citizenship in the small Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which has no individual income tax. “Bitcoin completely undermines the power of every single government on the entire planet to control the money supply, to tax people’s income to control them in any way,” he told a gathering of anarcho-capitalists in Acapulco, Mexico, in 2016. “It makes it so incredibly easy for people to hide their income or evade taxes.” More than one friend, he said with a smirk, had asked him how to do so: They “say, ‘Roger, I need your help. How do I use bitcoins to avoid paying taxes on it?’” Renouncing U.S. citizenship isn’t a magic get-out-of-tax-free technique. Since 2008, the U.S. has required expatriates with assets above $2 million pay a steep “exit tax” on the appreciation of all their property. In 2024, the Justice Department indicted Ver in one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases. The government accused Ver of lying to the IRS twice. After Ver renounced his citizenship in 2014, he claimed to the IRS that he personally did not own any bitcoin. He would later admit in his deal with the government to owning at least 130,664 bitcoin worth approximately $73.7 million at the time. Then in 2017, the government alleged, Ver tried to conceal the transfer of roughly $240 million in bitcoin from U.S. companies to his personal accounts. In all, the government said he had evaded nearly $50 million in taxes.  Ver’s defense was that his failure to pay taxes arose from a lack of clarity as to how tax law treated emerging cryptocurrency, good-faith accounting errors and reliance on his advisors’ advice. He claimed it was difficult to distinguish between his personal assets and his companies’ holdings and pinpoint what the bitcoin was actually worth. The Biden administration’s Justice Department dismissed this legal argument. Prosecutors had troves of emails that they said showed Ver misleading his own attorneys and tax preparers about the extent of his bitcoin holdings. (Ver’s team accused the government of taking his statements out of context.) The asset tracing in the case was “rock solid,” according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. A jury, prosecutors maintained, was unlikely to buy Ver’s defense that he made a good-faith error. By the time of Trump’s election, Ver had been arrested in Spain and was fighting extradition. He was also the new owner of a sleek $70 million yacht that some law enforcement officials worried he might use to escape on the high seas. In Trump, Ver saw a possible way out. After the 2024 election, he was “barking up every tree,” said his friend Brock Pierce, a fellow ultrawealthy crypto investor who tried to gin up sympathy for Ver in Trump’s orbit. Ver had initially gone the orthodox route of hiring tax attorneys from a prestigious law firm, Steptoe. Like many wealthy people in legal jeopardy, Ver now also launched a media blitz seeking a pardon from the incoming president.“If anybody knows what it’s like to be the victim of lawfare it’s Trump, so I think he’ll be able to see it in this case as well,” Ver said in a December 2024 appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show. On Charlie Kirk’s show, Ver appeared with tape over his mouth with the word “censored” written in red ink. Laura Loomer, the Trump-friendly influencer, began posting that Ver’s prosecution was unfair. Ver paid Trump insider Roger Stone $600,000 to lobby Congress for an end to the tax provision he was accused of violating. A dress at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala in 2024 shows an image of Ver. Adam Gray/AFP/Getty Images Ver’s pardon campaign fizzled. His public pressure campaign — in which he kept comparing himself to Trump — was not landing, according to Pierce. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors — shut up,” his friend recalled saying.  One objection in the White House, according to a person who works on pardons, may have been Ver’s flamboyant rejection of his American citizenship. Less than a week after Trump was inaugurated, Elon Musk weighed in, posting on X, “Roger Ver gave up his US citizenship. No pardon for Ver. Membership has its privileges.” But inside the Justice Department, Ver found an opening. The skeleton key proved to be one of the “Friends of Trump,” a seasoned defense lawyer named Christopher Kise. Kise is a longtime Florida Republican power player who served as the state’s solicitor general and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned a place in Trump’s inner circle as one of the first experienced criminal defenders willing to represent the president after his 2020 election loss. Kise defended Trump in the Justice Department investigation stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and against charges that Trump mishandled classified documents when leaving the White House. Kise had worked shoulder-to-shoulder on Trump’s cases with two lawyers who were now leaders in the Trump 2.0 Justice Department: Todd Blanche, who runs day-to-day operations at the department as deputy attorney general, and his associate deputy attorney general, Ketan Bhirud, who oversaw the criminal tax division prosecuting Ver. Kise reportedly helped select Blanche to join Trump’s legal team in the documents case, and he and Bhirud had both worked for Trump’s family as they fought civil fraud charges brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022.  On Ver’s legal team, Kise worked the phones, pressing his old colleagues to rethink their prosecution against Ver.  Kise scored the legal team’s first big victory in years: a meeting with Bhirud that cut out the career attorneys most familiar with the merits of the case. In that meeting, however, it wasn’t clear that the new Justice Department leadership would be willing to interfere with the trajectory of Ver’s case. While the Trump administration had backed off aggressive enforcement of white-collar crimes writ large, the administration said it was still pursuing most criminal cases that had already been charged . Bhirud initially expressed skepticism that Ver accidentally underpaid his taxes. It was “hard to believe” that a man going by “Bitcoin Jesus” would have no idea how much bitcoin he owned, Bhirud said, according to a person familiar with the case. Bhirud and Blanche did not respond to detailed questions from ProPublica. The Justice Department stuck to its position that either Ver would plead guilty to a crime, or the case would go to trial. But Kise would not stop lobbying his former colleagues to reconsider. Blanche and Bhirud had already demanded that career officials justify the case again and again. Over the course of the summer, Kise wore down the Trump appointees’ zeal for pursuing Ver on criminal charges.  Kise and the law firm of Steptoe did not respond to questions. “While there were meetings and conversations with DOJ, that is not uncommon. The line attorneys remained engaged throughout the process, and the case was ultimately resolved based on the strength of the evidence,” said Bryan Skarlatos, one of Ver’s tax attorneys and a partner at Kostelanetz. It was a chaotic moment at the Justice Department, an institution that Trump had incessantly accused of being “weaponized” against him and his supporters. After Trump took office, the department was flooded with requests to reconsider prosecutions, with defendants claiming the Biden administration had singled them out for political persecution, too. While many cases failed to grab the administration’s attention, Kise got results. Last week, Kise’s client Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian billionaire accused of trying to bribe the former governor of Puerto Rico, received a pardon from Trump. “Every defense attorney is running the ‘weaponization’ play. This guy gets an audience because of who he is, because his name is Chris Kise,” said a person who recently attended a high-level meeting Kise secured to talk the Justice Department down from prosecuting a client. As Kise stepped up the pressure, Ver’s case ate up a significant share of Bhirud’s time, despite his job overseeing more than 1,000 Justice Department attorneys, according to people familiar with the matter. Ordinarily, it would be rare for a political appointee to be so involved, especially to the exclusion of career prosecutors who could weigh in on the merits. Bhirud began to muse to coworkers about whether failure to pay one’s taxes should really be considered a crime. Wasn’t it more of a civil matter? It seemed to a colleague that Bhirud was aware Ver’s advocates could try to elevate the case to the White House. The government ceded ground and offered to take prison time off the table. Eventually, Ver’s team and Bhirud hit on the deal that would baffle criminal tax experts. They agreed on a deferred prosecution agreement that would allow Ver to avoid criminal charges and prison in exchange for a payout and an agreement not to violate any more laws. The government usually reserves such an agreement for lawbreaking corporations to avoid putting large employers out of business — not for fugitive billionaires. By the time fall approached, Kise and Bhirud, with Blanche’s blessing, were negotiating Ver’s extraordinary deal line by line. Once more, career prosecutors were cut out from the negotiations. Ver’s team enjoyed a remarkable ability to dictate terms. They rejected the text of the government’s supposed final offer because it required him to admit to “fraud,” according to a person familiar with the negotiations. In the end, Ver agreed to admit only to a “willful” failure to report and pay taxes on all his bitcoin and turned over the $50 million. The government arrived at that figure in a roundabout manner. It dropped its claim that Ver had lied on his 2017 tax return. The $50 million figure was based on how much he had evaded in taxes in 2014 alone, plus what the government asserted were interest and penalties. In the end, the deal amounted to the sum he allegedly owed in the first place. He never even had to leave Mallorca to appear in a U.S. court. Under any previous administration, convincing the leadership of the tax division to drop an indicted criminal case and accept a monetary penalty instead would be a nonstarter. While the Justice Department settles most tax matters civilly through fines, when prosecutors do charge criminal fraud, their conviction rate is over 90% .  People “always ask you, ‘Can’t I just pay the taxes and it’ll go away?’” said Jack Townsend, a former federal tax prosecutor. “The common answer that everybody gave — until the Trump administration — was that, no, you can’t do that.” When the Justice Department announced the resolution in October, it touted it as a victory. “We are pleased that Mr. Ver has taken responsibility for his past misconduct and satisfied his obligations to the American public,” Bhirud said in the Justice Department’s press release announcing the deferred prosecution agreement. “This resolution sends a clear message: whether you deal in dollars or digital assets, you must file accurate tax returns and pay what you owe.” Inside the Justice Department, the resolution was demoralizing: “He’s admitted he owes money, and we get money, but everything else about it stinks to high heaven,” said a current DOJ official familiar with the case. “We shouldn’t negotiate with people who are fugitives, as if they have power over us.” Among the wealthy targets of white-collar criminal investigations, the Ver affair sent a different message. Lawyers who specialize in that kind of work told ProPublica that more and more clients are asking which of the “Friends of Trump” they should hire. One prominent criminal tax defense lawyer said he would give his clients a copy of Ver’s agreement and tell them, “These are the guys who got this done.” The only one of Ver’s many lawyers to sign it was Christopher Kise. The post How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump” appeared first on ProPublica .

The state of New Mexico is accusing three Texas oil executives of orchestrating “a fraudulent scheme” to pocket revenue from hundreds of oil and gas wells in New Mexico and offload the cost of plugging and cleaning up the wells onto the state’s taxpayers. The suit, filed in late December by the New Mexico attorney general’s office, is the latest salvo in the state’s fight against oil and gas executives accused of foisting old wells onto the public. The 72-page complaint alleges a yearslong pattern of fraud and self-dealing in which the oil executives — Everett Willard Gray II, Robert Stitzel and Marquis Reed Gilmore Jr., all of Midland, Texas — repeatedly transferred wells among “a series of shell corporations, LLCs, and partnerships they created.” On multiple occasions, the men placed companies into bankruptcy protection, only to move their profitable wells to other companies they owned or managed outside the bankruptcy proceedings, the suit said. New Mexico faces millions of dollars in costs to plug wells the companies shed through the bankruptcies. Unplugged oil and gas wells can emit climate-warming methane and carcinogenic gases and often leak briny, radioactive wastewater , as ProPublica and Capital & Main detailed in a 2024 investigation . The newsrooms uncovered Gray, Stitzel and Gilmore’s early business dealings and use of bankruptcy proceedings. “I will not stand by while bad actors take advantage of the system — avoiding responsibility, burdening the state with costly remediation, and recklessly endangering the health of New Mexicans,” Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement . As part of ProPublica and Capital & Main’s 2024 investigation, the news organizations toured dozens of wells belonging to Remnant, the group of companies through which the men launched their enterprise. Some wells leaked such high volumes of methane that, if ignited, the air could explode; others emitted hydrogen sulfide at potentially lethal concentrations; and several were surrounded by oil and wastewater spills. At the time, the owner of an oil field services company that had worked on Remnant’s wells said that the men filed for bankruptcy protection without paying his company what it was owed. The recent lawsuit is “meritless” and built on “baseless claims,” Gray said in a statement responding to questions from ProPublica and Capital & Main. “I have always acted ethically and never been involved in any activities to defraud the state of New Mexico. I strongly deny any wrongdoing in this matter,” he said. New Era Energy & Digital, one of Gray’s companies named in the state’s complaint, ended up with 87 of the group’s best gas wells, and the company said in a press release that those “no longer align with the Company’s business model.” New Era is focused instead on building an AI data center powered by a yet-to-be-built nuclear power station, it said. Stitzel and Gilmore didn’t respond to requests for comment. The tactics alleged by the attorney general are commonly used in the industry to squeeze profits from old wells before companies go bankrupt. Oil and gas executives so frequently follow a similar pattern that environmentalists call it “the playbook.” Oil companies and trade groups argue that most orphan wells are from an earlier era and that modern operators are helping address the problem by paying into various government-managed funds that pay for the plugging of some old wells. The exact number of orphan wells awaiting cleanup nationwide is unknown, but the figure is believed to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not higher. New Mexico faces as much as a $1.6 billion bill to plug such wells, according to a June 2025 Legislative Finance Committee report . “As the oil boom is aging and a lot of the wells are becoming low-producing, the risk is increasing,” said Mandy Sackett, the lead New Mexico campaigner for environmental group Earthworks. The potential for taxpayers to be saddled with plugging oil companies’ orphan wells, she said, “poses such a massive financial risk.” “Out of the Dark Ages” The problem of Remnant and other companies leaving wells as orphans is informing a broader reckoning among legislators and regulatory agencies about the inadequacy of New Mexico’s safeguards. Oil companies are required to set aside funds, called bonds, that the state can call on to pay for well plugging and environmental cleanup. These bonds are meant to protect taxpayers from shouldering such costs in the event that a company goes bankrupt or walks away. But like all oil-producing states, New Mexico’s bonds cover only a fraction of the true cost of cleanup. A 2024 ProPublica and Capital & Main analysis found that the 15 states that account for nearly all the nation’s oil and gas production held bonds that would cover less than 2% of the projected $151.3 billion cost to plug the wells in their states. In New Mexico, a fresh attempt at bonding reform kicked off with hearings in October, as the state’s Oil Conservation Commission began updating bonding rules. The proposed amendments, which are backed by a coalition of environmental groups, would require companies to put forward a $150,000 bond for each inactive or low-producing well. Research has shown that these are disproportionately likely to become orphans and the state’s responsibility to plug. The proposed regulations target companies with large collections of these risky wells and would require companies whose portfolios are made up of at least 15% inactive or low-producing wells to buy bonds for each of their wells. The proposals would also place other layers of regulatory scrutiny on sales of wells to poorly capitalized companies and limit the time that wells could remain idle before needing to be plugged. Mark Olalde/ProPublica Reporter Nick Bowlin tests an orphan well that had belonged to Remnant and Acacia for methane and hydrogen sulfide leaks near Artesia, New Mexico. Oil Conservation Division officials said in a statement that “the interested parties are currently engaged in settlement talks” for the bonding rulemaking. The agency declined to comment on the attorney general’s lawsuit. ​​New Mexico’s State Land Office, which oversees the state’s publicly owned land, recently initiated a similar process to increase the amount of money set aside in bonds to plug wells within its jurisdiction. The agency estimates that there are 15,000 unplugged oil and gas wells on land it manages. Ari Biernoff, general counsel of the State Land Office, said that these reforms would bring bonding requirements “out of the Dark Ages” and closer to what the agency would need to fund cleanup should companies walk away. “Any reasonable observer would conclude we have grossly inadequate bonding,” Biernoff said. Industry groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed rules. The New Mexico Oil & Gas Association and Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico submitted counterproposals with significantly reduced bonding increases. The latter said in comments submitted to the state that its suggestion “will keep smaller operators from going out of business.” “We do not believe it’s in New Mexico’s best interest for the State Land Office to kill a lot of smaller, state-based, good operators to leave only a handful of supermajors,” Jim Winchester, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, wrote to the agency . Remnants of the Oil Industry Beginning in 2015, Gray, Stitzel and Gilmore aggregated several hundred wells in southeastern New Mexico under the Remnant companies, subsequently racking up regulatory violations, including having too many inactive, unplugged wells. The state’s Oil Conservation Division gave Remnant a deadline of July 2019 to plug some of its wells. Fifteen days before the deadline, the men placed the company into bankruptcy protection. Remnant’s dissolution kicked off a complex and disputed series of transactions among the three men. According to the attorney general’s complaint, Stitzel and Gilmore created several companies under the name Acacia and purchased most of Remnant’s wells from themselves. Gray, meanwhile, created Solis Partners — a wholly owned subsidiary of Gray’s New Era — and ended up with 87 of the group’s most lucrative gas-producing wells. The bill of sale that landed the wells with Gray’s company was for $10, and Gray signed on behalf of Remnant a change-of-operator application that sent wells to Solis Partners. Then, in December 2024, a major oil company that the state had asked to plug some of Acacia’s wells sued Acacia to force it to clean up its own mess. Two weeks later, Acacia filed to liquidate through bankruptcy. Of Remnant’s and Acacia’s wells, 172 ended up as the responsibility of the State Land Office, according to the agency. Eleven of those have been plugged, all but one by other oil companies that hold leases with the agency and stepped up to do the work. Based on the state’s estimated per-well cleanup cost, the remaining wells could cost a total of more than $25 million to plug. The agency was able to claim a single bond from Remnant worth $20,000. “This is a very vivid demonstration of why we need an upgrade to the bonding rule,” said Biernoff, the State Land Office general counsel. The most lucrative wells from Gray, Stitzel and Gilmore’s foray into New Mexico’s oil and gas industry belong to Solis Partners. But even that company appears at risk of leaving them as orphans, as it has about 120 inactive wells on state trust land, according to the State Land Office. Its parent company, New Era, which is pitching plans for a 3,500-acre AI data center campus in southeastern New Mexico, said it is selling the wells. “Having enriched themselves with the profits from Solis Partners’ and Acacia’s oil and gas production, the Individual Defendants are once again seeking to walk away from the plugging and remediation costs,” the attorney general’s complaint alleged. Charlie Barrett is an ecologist with environmental group Oilfield Witness who has chronicled pollution at Remnant’s and Acacia’s wells for years. “They’re old, they’re just falling apart,” he said. They are also, he said, emblematic of the small oil and gas operators that represent the final stage of the industry leaving its wells as orphans. “I wish I could say that it’s unique,” Barrett said, “but it isn’t.” The post “A Fraudulent Scheme”: New Mexico Sues Texas Oil Companies for Walking Away From Their Leaking Wells appeared first on ProPublica .

A top Alaska lawmaker said the state needs to hire twice as many prosecutors and public defenders if it wants to end the kind of extreme courtroom delays that the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica exposed over the past year. Rep. Andrew Gray, chair of a legislative committee that holds jurisdiction over the Alaska court system, prosecutors and public defenders, said the news organizations’ stories of criminal cases delayed for years “stab my heart.” The time it takes to resolve Alaska’s most serious felony cases is three years, or more than twice as long as in 2015. “I hate how slow this system is. It kills me,” Gray said. The blame, he said, should not fall on the front-line attorneys but on the state of Alaska for failing to hire enough prosecutors and public defenders. Gray is the latest official to respond to stories in the Daily News and ProPublica revealing how delays can harm criminal defendants and crime victims alike. Susan M. Carney, chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, said in February that the system was “not meeting expectations — our own or Alaskans’” when it comes to the swift execution of justice. The next month, the court ordered new restrictions on pretrial continuances. But Gray said that beyond the court order, it will take new resources to meet the goal of resolving more cases quickly. The court system’s own standard for speedy trials sets a 120-day deadline, which is rarely met. (Gray, in an interview, and Carney, in her speech to the Legislature, both noted that the median time to resolve less serious charges is far faster than for the most serious felonies: Class B misdemeanors — crimes such as criminal mischief or shoplifting — are closed within a median of about four months, Carney said.) Victim advocates, attorneys and judges told the newsrooms that Alaska has grappled with increasing delays for decades. Gray said lawmakers, who write the state spending plan and started a new legislative session on Tuesday, should include additional funding to reduce the caseloads carried by prosecutors and public defenders. “I don’t know exactly what the number is, but it will be a big one,” Gray said. “And yes, I would absolutely advocate for that.” 120 Days Alaska’s speedy-trial deadline. 1,124 Days The median time it took for the most serious category of felony cases to be resolved in Alaska in 2025. That’s more than twice as long as in 2015.  Retired Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Niesje Steinkruger, who worked as a public defender and assistant attorney general, agreed that inadequate staffing places a strain on attorneys on both sides who are being pushed to resolve cases faster. “It puts those lawyers in just an awful position. They are type A personalities: They want to do the best that they can.” Jacqueline Shepherd, an ACLU of Alaska attorney who tracks pretrial delays, agreed about the need for more front-line attorneys. According to a 1998 audit for the Legislature, public defenders can “ethically” handle no more than 59 cases at a time. Shepherd said some public defenders in Anchorage are asked to juggle 140 to 170. “Obviously, they are overloaded,” she said. But she said that adding staff alone won’t be enough to solve the problem. Judges, she said, need to start bucking Alaska’s culture of courtroom delay and make sure cases are moving toward trial or dismissal. Gray, a Democrat in traditionally red Alaska, became chair of the Judiciary Committee because Alaska’s Senate and House are currently run by bipartisan majorities. His proposal for more money is likely to prove difficult in a state that has no state income or sales tax and faces revenue shortfalls made deeper by low oil prices. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, in December proposed a plan that would shore up services by spending from reserves while also setting the annual oil wealth dividend each resident receives at $3,650, a big increase over previous years. The dividend payout would cost twice what Dunleavy has requested for public safety, courts and prisons combined. A spokesperson for the governor did not directly answer a question about whether Dunleavy would support doubling prosecutors and state defense attorneys. However, the spokesperson noted that funding for prosecutors and defense attorneys has already increased under Dunleavy in an attempt to reduce caseloads and backlogs. 74 Delays Number of times one Anchorage sexual assault case was postponed in the 10 years it took to reach a jury. State budget documents show spending on the Department of Law, which employs state prosecutors, was $123 million last year — or 42% higher than it was in 2018, when Dunleavy was elected. Spending on two agencies that oversee state-appointed defense attorneys was a combined $87 million, a 69% increase. The Department of Public Safety’s spending also rose by the same percentage. “Improving public safety has been Gov. Dunleavy’s top priority throughout his time in office,” spokesperson Grant Robinson said. The boost to defense attorney and prosecutor budgets was due in part to a bill passed in 2022, part of an effort to raise pay and improve retention and recruitment. Gray said that effort was a good first step that helped fill vacant jobs. But he said the next step is to expand the workforce. “They need to acknowledge that even being fully staffed, they are overworking their folks and that is the reason we are seeing these cases that drag on for an eternity,” he said. But House Finance Co-Chair Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said any effort to double the number of those attorneys is unlikely to succeed this year. The state is too strapped for cash, he said. “It’s the same reason why the Anchorage School District has a $78 million budget deficit ,” said Josephson, a former prosecutor who oversees the Department of Law budget and sponsored the bill increasing state attorney salaries. “For decades, we have been trying to give people dividends and not tax them, and the system is exhausted by those two things.” Over that same span, victim rights advocates noticed longer and longer delays for the most serious criminal cases. Some dragged on for so long that victims died before seeing justice, such as two women sexually assaulted in broad daylight in one of Anchorage’s most popular parks. The attacks occurred in 2017, yet it took seven years and 50 delays for the case to go to trial in December 2024. The jury found the defendant, Fred Tom Hurley III, guilty of two counts of second-degree sexual assault but not guilty of one count of sexual assault. Another case took even longer: 10 years. In all that time, as judges allowed 74 delays, no one in the courtroom ever asked the victim what she wanted. A key witness died along the way. A jury in April found the defendant, Lafi Faualo, guilty of first-degree sexual assault and first-degree assault involving a weapon but not guilty of one count of sexual assault. Faualo’s defense attorney was juggling some 375 active cases before the trial. 59 Cases The maximum ethical workload for a single prosecutor or defense attorney, according to the Alaska Division of Legislative Audit. In another example of extreme delays, Kipnuk resident Justine Paul spent seven years in jail for murder after being indicted on key blood evidence that proved within one year to be flawed. Meanwhile, the killing of his girlfriend Eunice Whitman remains unsolved, with the investigation only recently reopened. State officials say the situation has improved since the state Supreme Court’s order limiting pretrial delays took effect in May. Rebecca Koford, spokesperson for the Alaska Court System, said that as of Jan. 1, 2026, there are 743 pending felony cases that are more than two years old — 16% of all felonies. That’s an improvement from Jan. 1, 2024, when there were 1,428 such cases, representing 22% of the total. The court’s order on delays, combined with earlier efforts in 2023, “have led to significant progress,” Koford said. “Judges have been limiting continuances, stacking trials and using every resource available to move cases forward expeditiously and fairly.” Still, the latest annual report from the Alaska Criminal Justice Data Analysis Commission noted that cases continue to take longer than they did in 2019 and before. Gray acknowledged it will be very hard to get lawmakers to agree on more money for attorneys. “But we must have that debate,” he said, “because that is how we solve this problem.” The post Alaska Lawmaker Calls for Hiring More Prosecutors, Public Defenders to Reduce Extreme Delay in Criminal Cases appeared first on ProPublica .

In 2020, a foster care supervisor in Montcalm County, Michigan, messaged her boss with concerns about drug testing. A father who was working to reunite with his children had tested positive for methamphetamine with the lab the state had a contract with, Averhealth, and the results contradicted tests ordered by other law enforcement agencies, she wrote. “Judge indicated on the record that the issue of Averhealth’s testing results was a state-wide issue and that probate court judges all over the state were having similar problems.” Months later, another official with Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services wrote to colleagues about similar worries. “We are struggling to do casework with Averhealth and don’t trust them,” supervisor Sara Winter wrote. “We are making BIG decisions, including having parents leave home or removal, and that’s scary to do when you don’t trust who you’re getting services from.” The cause of the discrepancies was unknown. But that year, 2021, Averhealth’s accreditor faulted its practices and placed the lab on a six-month probation , citing, among other issues, data manipulation and failed proficiency tests, which are done to ensure test accuracy. When state officials caught wind of the investigation and repeatedly inquired about it, they hit a wall. The College of American Pathologists’ Forensic Drug Testing Accreditation Program told them that “findings of the investigation are kept confidential.” They asked Averhealth’s then-CEO Jason Herzog for all available reports on the lab. He was out of the office, he said, and promised to “track down when I have a good internet connection.” Averhealth didn’t disclose that it had been placed on probation — its contract didn’t require such notification. And more than a year would pass before Michigan officials got a full picture of what accreditors observed at one of the nation’s largest drug-testing operations for child welfare, custody and probation cases.  Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the messages its staff sent regarding Averhealth. A ProPublica investigation found that Averhealth’s lab practices have not only been faulted by its own accreditor but also targeted in lawsuits, and prompted Michigan’s child welfare agency to order its employees not to use Averhealth’s tests as evidence in court and to withdraw any petitions based solely on the lab’s results. Six former employees told ProPublica that the company’s central lab facility in St. Louis was mismanaged. The former employees, who include two chemists and two lab managers, complained variously of understaffing, broken and poorly maintained instruments, and pressure from management to speed up the delivery of test results, even when some feared they were compromising accuracy. In statements and interviews, the company defended its practices and denied that leadership mismanaged its laboratory. “Averhealth provides accurate and forensically defensible test results,” company CEO Dominique Delagnes said in a statement . “The integrity of the data and information that we provide is of the highest importance to us.” Averhealth’s goal, she said, is to “reclaim lives, unite families, and strengthen communities” and “not separate children from their parents.” Delagnes has called the choice to not inform Michigan officials of the company’s probation “a business decision” that was made by Herzog, whom she succeeded as CEO. Averhealth’s accreditor said the problems it observed at the lab weren’t concerning enough to halt testing. Read More Her Parenting Time Was Restricted After a Positive Drug Test. By Federal Standards, It Would’ve Been Negative. The company attributed the conflicting test results flagged by officials in Montcalm County, Michigan, to different technical standards used by other labs, adding that it “in no way calls into question the accuracy or reliability of Averhealth’s testing.” It also said that no single test result has a significant impact on a case. “It usually takes a number of positive tests as well as other indications of risk before significant consequences are imposed,” a company spokesperson said in an interview. The company cited an independent review by outside scientists as evidence that its protocols are sound, along with the fact that Averhealth never lost accreditation. In 2023, a group of parents filed a lawsuit alleging that test results were erroneous, which prevented them from seeing their children and in some cases caused them to lose custody permanently. “Averhealth’s false positive results have had a devastating impact,” according to the complaint, which cited “substantial emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, stress and sleeplessness.” Averhealth denied the allegations in the lawsuit, which it attributed to “opportunistic plaintiffs’ attorneys hoping for a windfall settlement and plaintiffs seeking to escape the consequences of their positive tests,” according to a statement. Averhealth settled the lawsuit in September. ProPublica interviewed more than 50 people involved in family court or criminal proceedings who said they were tested by Averhealth and had received what they believed were inaccurate results. Some said they had tried to dispute the findings by presenting in court negative test results from other labs — one of the only ways to officially dispute a court-ordered drug test, and a strategy often recommended by attorneys. But tests from different labs are difficult to compare, and judges don’t always give credence to contradictory results. “After multiple investigations and a probationary period, no entity or individual has found any material inaccuracy in Averhealth’s reported test result,” the company said in a statement. After the lab’s probation was made public, Michigan ’s and Georgia ’s agencies overseeing child welfare cut ties with Averhealth. Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that its “contract with Averhealth has expired and we have not used Averhealth since March 2022.” The Georgia Division of Family & Children Services told ProPublica in a statement that it did not renew the contract when it ended in 2023 “due to a variety of risks identified” during an assessment. The lab’s problems went beyond what the accreditor found, some of the former employees told ProPublica. And those problems continued after the probation period ended, they said.  Other government clients are sticking with the company. “They have been a valued partner of the Judicial Branch,” said a spokesperson for the Judicial Branch of Arizona in Maricopa County, whose Adult Probation and Family Court order 7,000-10,000 tests a month from the company. The company that became Averhealth was founded in 1995 by former California police officer Rick McIntire, who spent his career in undercover narcotics and viewed drugs as a societal menace. Drug testing was booming, with courts getting federal grants to implement programs. Clinical labs were billing $600 a test, McIntire recalled. He saw an opportunity to charge less and make money on volume. There is next to no regulation of court-ordered drug testing by the federal government, states or the courts. At one point, McIntire said, a hospital lobbyist sought legislation in California to ban labs like McIntire’s. McIntire said he convinced lawmakers that testing doesn’t require clinical expertise. “It was determined that this is non-diagnostic in nature,” he said, meaning it isn’t used to determine medical conditions. “Therefore, it doesn’t require any special licensing — you can be a businessman.” In 2011, McIntire sold his company to investment bankers Herzog, Jeff Herr and David Keys, who later renamed it Averhealth. The trio, who did not respond to requests for comment, had no lab experience but specialized in mergers and acquisitions. Their goal, McIntire recalls from conversations with them, was to grow and sell. In 2019, Five Arrows Capital Partners, a private equity fund and arm of Rothschild & Co., acquired a majority stake. It valued Averhealth at $150 million, according to a deposition of Herzog for the parents’ lawsuit against the company. With new investment, Averhealth “focused on growth by acquisition” of regional labs, “just trying to basically get new contracts,” one former finance team member said in an interview. The former employee asked not to be named to protect their job prospects. (Five Arrows and Rothschild & Co. did not respond to requests for comment.) Averhealth markets its science as the gold standard. Its St. Louis lab is overseen by Ph.D. toxicologists and “is run by very dedicated and competent employees under well thought out guidelines,” current lab director Tonya Mitchell said in an email. Company marketing materials say it has the capability to detect when samples are diluted by cheating test-takers and to test for emerging and obscure drugs. Samples are flown in from across the country to be analyzed in Averhealth’s St. Louis lab. Bryan Birks for ProPublica Christopher Totten, a former business development manager who pitched the company’s services in the Southeast, called Averhealth the Apple of judicial drug testing. Its methods are a vast improvement on — and significantly more expensive than — the in-house labs still used by some rural courts, where nonscientists use instant tests and don’t always confirm the accuracy of the results, he said. Averhealth doesn’t publicly disclose its entire client list or total revenues from the many state agencies it serves. But in 2019, for example, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services agreed to a five-year contract valued at an estimated $27 million to do testing for its child welfare system. And Massachusetts budgeted more than $5 million last fiscal year for the company to test probationers, according to public records. The company boasts that its innovation extends beyond lab work. Its Aversys software, which randomizes testing schedules and collects data on test-takers, features “predictive analytics” that “ID patients at risk for relapse — before they relapse,” the company website stated in 2023 . Averhealth said it did this by tracking when people called in to see if they would be required to test that day or otherwise interacted with its test-scheduling system. Addiction experts say they are dubious of such claims. “To my knowledge, there is absolutely no scientific data to support the notion that irregularity in logging in to an app predicts relapse,” said Katie Witkiewitz, a professor of psychology and the director of the University of New Mexico Center on Alcoholism, Substance Use, and Addictions. According to a former employee with knowledge of Averhealth software, the company didn’t collect data to support this marketing claim. “I saw no evidence of them tracking outcome data on relapse,” said the former employee, who asked not to be named to protect their job prospects in the industry. After being contacted by a reporter, the company removed from its website the claim that it can “ID patients at risk for relapse.” The company said in a statement that “the website is continually updated, and regardless, Averhealth has never claimed to predict that a relapse will happen. It has only ever claimed that its software can identify those at risk.” One of Averhealth’s biggest selling points is speed: The company promises to report results by the next business day. This requires its collection centers around the country to ship hair, saliva and urine samples overnight to Missouri, where the lab runs 24 hours a day. Three former lab employees — a lab tech, a chemist and a lab manager — told ProPublica that they regularly worked 12- and even 14-hour shifts and still couldn’t meet the deadlines. Pressure to speed up delivery of results came from the top, said another lab manager, who worked at Averhealth in 2022. The manager, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job prospects, said lab instruments were regularly in disrepair and out of service, which made meeting deadlines difficult. The manager met regularly with Delagnes, who was COO at the time, and other upper management. The manager recalls them saying, “The clients are calling and screaming, ‘What are you going to do to get these results through?’ And often my answer was, ‘The instruments are broken again. I don’t have enough people.’” The manager was unsure whether instrument maintenance affected the accuracy of test results. A former employee named Stephen Penn, a chemist who also worked at the company in 2022, said he experienced similar deadline pressures. “They emphasized speed over accuracy,” he said. When preparing samples for testing, “I was interested in getting it done well. But the push was to get it done fast.” Penn, who has over 20 years of experience in labs, left Averhealth “because of the speed issue.” Another chemist, Jennifer Picker, who worked at Averhealth from January of 2021 to July of 2022, said that when loading samples onto an instrument that confirms results, called a high performance liquid chromatograph, she was pressured to speed up to the point that she worried samples would be linked to the wrong person. “I was always extraordinarily slow and meticulous about the placement of my sample on the HPLC. And there were a lot of complaints about that I wasn’t fast enough. And I’m like, ‘No way. This is that patient’s life.’” Averhealth acknowledged that it emphasizes speed but added that it’s not at the expense of accuracy. “Averhealth requires its employees to work efficiently to meet its customers’ production standards and required turnaround times,” the company said in a statement. “Importantly, delaying test results could lead to a miscarriage of justice, as litigants’ cases are delayed and potentially endanger children and the community who rely on the court system, in cooperation with Averhealth, to keep them safe.” Delagnes said in a sworn statement provided to ProPublica that she has “never placed speed over accuracy in our lab testing, nor have I ever directed anyone else to do so.” Picker, the chemist, shared documentation to support her allegation that standard lab practices weren’t followed at Averhealth, including a photo of a pipette maintenance log. Chemists were to complete the logs daily to verify instrument performance. But according to Picker, this didn’t happen. She noted that the photo shows each day’s required checks were signed in the same ink and handwriting. “I watched people fill this out retroactively,” she said. Picker also shared a photo of urine samples outside the biohazard lab area, sitting on a desk next to personal items and snacks. This was a violation of policy, she said, citing notices posted in the lab stating that specimens were not to be removed. Three images shared with ProPublica by Jennifer Picker, a chemist who worked at Averhealth, show urine samples next to snacks (first image), a pipette maintenance log (second image) and a sign on a door stating that lab items are not permitted outside the lab. Obtained by ProPublica. Redaction of first image by ProPublica. Averhealth denied that lab instruments were broken or poorly maintained and that employees filled out maintenance logs retroactively. Regarding the photo of a pipette maintenance log, the company said: “The same employee would be responsible for filling out the log, so it makes perfect sense that they would have the same handwriting and use the same pen at their workstation.” Averhealth initially told ProPublica that removing samples from the lab’s biohazard area and leaving them on a desk next to personal items and snacks was not a policy violation. Picker had a “fundamental misunderstanding of the lab security and sample integrity procedure,” it said. “There was no mishandling.” When presented with photos of a sign on a lab door saying not to remove samples from the area, a company representative said: “At any company there are going to be instances where potentially policies are not adhered to from time to time. I’m not aware that this is a significant issue for Averhealth.” The company described Picker as “a disgruntled former employee pushing a false narrative” whose time at the company “was marked by repeated disciplinary issues, including bullying other employees and failing to report to work.” The company said in a statement, “Picker struggled to meet her workload, not because of company demands, but because the medication she was taking left her sleepy, lethargic, and frequently absent.” Picker denied that she had disciplinary issues or struggled to meet her workload. While she did take an allergy medicine at work, she said it didn’t affect her performance. Picker said she resigned when her complaint about the misplaced urine samples was not taken seriously. Averhealth did not comment on Picker’s reasons for resigning. The company also questioned Penn’s claim that the company “emphasized speed over accuracy.” In a statement, Averhealth said that Penn “did not raise any concerns about Averhealth before or after his resignation.” The company also noted that Penn is “closely connected to Ms. Picker.” (Penn rents living space in Picker’s home.)  “I had made up my own mind about the company and separating from them,” said Penn. “What I observed, that they placed speed over accuracy, didn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Jennifer.” Penn said he didn’t bring his concerns to the company because “I didn’t think it would make a difference.” The most consequential and public criticism of Averhealth has come from Sarah Riley, a professor of pathology at Saint Louis University, who was hired as the lab’s director in September 2020. After seven weeks in that role, she abruptly resigned and filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit. The Department of Justice investigated Riley’s claims and pursued a case, but chose to intervene on only some of the allegations. According to the DOJ, the company had billed Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services for tests it didn’t perform: Averhealth’s contract required it to confirm all positive drug tests using a second method; the government alleged it had tested samples only once. Averhealth agreed to pay the DOJ $1.3 million to settle the case in June 2024. The company didn’t admit wrongdoing. “We believe Averhealth fully performed under the MDHHS contract,” Delagnes said in a statement to ProPublica . “Averhealth settled the matter to avoid the cost and distraction of litigation.” The company said in a statement that because the DOJ investigated but did not intervene on Riley’s claim that its tests were inaccurate, Averhealth results are accurate. Mark Johnson, who was Averhealth’s CEO from 2022 to 2024, said in an interview that Averhealth conducting just one test on the Michigan samples “didn’t impact reliability because we went to a more advanced test,” a test typically used to confirm an initial positive result. During the DOJ investigation, the company’s business “performed well” and the volume of tests it conducted continued to grow, Johnson added.  Riley received a $228,586 whistleblower award from the DOJ settlement. She declined to comment for this article about her experience at Averhealth. In February 2021, Riley was called to testify in a Michigan courtroom by a lawyer representing a mom trying to reunite with her kids in the foster system. The mom had tested positive for marijuana with Averhealth, but outside lab tests had found no evidence of drug use. In court, Riley said that she had resigned from Averhealth after discovering what she considered to be problems with the lab’s accuracy. She testified that the lab routinely failed to use proper quality controls on its confirmation tests. Such tests, intended to definitively prove positive results, are performed on sophisticated lab instruments called mass spectrometers. According to Riley’s testimony, Averhealth technicians weren’t using the equipment properly because they “were under tremendous pressure” to report results quickly. “Did you bring these concerns to the attention of the management of Averhealth?” the Michigan mom’s lawyer asked. She had, Riley said. “Their reaction was, ‘Thank you for bringing us your concerns. Please don’t change anything at this time. We have contractual time agreements to get the data out, and we just want to get the data out.’” Former Averhealth lab director Sarah Riley testified that the company’s management wanted to get results out quickly to meet contractual agreements. Highlighted by ProPublica The judge in the case, Lisa McCormick, declined to toss the contested Averhealth test results. “Dr. Riley’s testimony was speculative and did not provide the Court with any specific examples,” she wrote in her opinion. The judge later terminated the mom’s parental rights, according to court documents, citing missed drug tests and failure to benefit from services, among other issues. Termination of parental rights, which is typically irreversible, means children can be adopted by other families. In 2024, Riley was deposed in Foulger vs. Avertest, the lawsuit brought by the parents who alleged their test results were incorrect. She again testified that the lab’s emphasis on speed was problematic. “Dominique and I had weekly calls, at least weekly, sometimes it was more than that,” Riley said of the CEO, “and the emphasis was always on getting the results out before anything else.” Her concern about speed was echoed by the former employees interviewed by ProPublica. Averhealth denied Riley’s allegations about its lab practices and said that her testimony shows she misunderstood its science. Riley has estimated that Averhealth’s rate of inaccurate tests could be as high as 30%. In the 2024 deposition, she said the way the lab used calibrators was flawed and contributed to these errors. Calibrators ensure the measurements produced by mass spectrometers are correct. But Averhealth said that she didn’t grasp how the lab distinguishes between positive and negative tests, and that its process had been endorsed by lab regulators. The judge in the parents’ case expressed doubts that Riley’s allegations about accuracy would hold up in court. Before the case was settled, the judge wrote in an order, “At trial the Court may end up sustaining an objection to her opinion that thirty percent of Averhealth’s tests are unreliable unless Plaintiffs lay sufficient foundation to explain why her thirty percent estimate (which presumably arises solely out of testing hair samples for THC) is reliable as to other forms of tests for other drugs.” Riley’s allegations triggered investigations by multiple outside scientists. In January of 2021, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services hired an independent firm, Wagner Toxicology Associates, to audit Averhealth’s lab and address judges’ concerns about Riley’s allegations. Two toxicologists, who were unaware of Riley or her complaints, spent two days in the lab “to confirm that the laboratory personnel were performing their laboratory work in accordance with their laboratory manual,” they wrote. “A relatively small number of reports was audited during the visit, and the reporting process was observed.” Wagner Toxicology issued a nine-page report stating that Averhealth’s scientists were competent and followed procedure, and that the lab’s results could be “scientifically supported and forensically defended in court.” Michigan’s agency didn’t know the separate, confidential investigation by Averhealth’s accreditor was also underway. That investigation, launched after Riley sent a letter to the accreditor, would reach different conclusions about the lab’s operations. Averhealth’s accreditor is the forensic drug testing program at the College of American Pathologists, a private professional organization that provides expert oversight to forensic labs. In early 2021, the organization’s toxicologists reviewed thousands of pages of data from Averhealth’s lab and found “numerous” problems with hair, urine and oral fluid testing. “This laboratory has many quality assurance issues in the areas of quality control and proficiency testing,” Arthur Zebelman, commissioner of the forensic drug testing program, wrote in a 2021 email to colleagues that was later made public in a lawsuit. CAP substantiated Riley’s allegations. In a letter , it stated that those allegations were: “concern regarding unacceptable quality assurance of mass spectrometry confirmatory testing”; “failure to follow procedures as written”; “concern regarding the manipulation of instrument calibrations”; and “concern regarding the review of quality control results.” CAP informed Averhealth it was on probation “based on the laboratory’s lack of continuous compliance” with “quality management” standards. The purpose of the investigation was to check whether the lab followed proper protocols, not to verify the accuracy of all the tests Averhealth had reported. But the question of false positives and false negatives did come up. Internal emails show CAP scientists discussed how problems in the lab might impact test results but didn’t reach a definite conclusion about whether the issues they found would influence accuracy. “The laboratory does not seem to have a problem with false positive results,” one toxicologist wrote , adding that its process for determining the quantity or concentration of drugs “is at times unacceptable and they do not seem to take the timely resolution of such problems seriously enough.” Another toxicologist involved in the audit seemed to disagree. “Qualitative reporting errors could exist,” that toxicologist wrote , citing “imprecision and lack of quantitative accuracy.” A qualitative reporting error is a negative test that is reported as a positive, or vice versa. The probation lasted six months, during which the lab continued testing. “CAP did not find any test results that were incorrectly reported and did not require Averhealth to rereport results with a different result,” the company said in a statement. In an interview, Zebelman defended allowing Averhealth to continue testing while on probation.  The lab was forthcoming with records and cooperated with inspectors to fix errors, he said, emphasizing that CAP membership is a “voluntary, educational program for laboratory improvement. We’re not trying to create gotcha moments.” Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly asked Averhealth about the investigation, according to public records reviewed by ProPublica. CAP told the state agency that the findings would be kept confidential. Herzog, then Averhealth’s CEO, made the decision to not disclose that it was on probation, according to Delagnes, the current CEO, who said as much in a deposition in the parents’ lawsuit against the company. “I’m not trying to pass the buck. It was a business decision that started with him,” she said. (CAP told ProPublica that government agencies could require labs to be more transparent about accreditation issues. A child welfare agency could, for instance, contractually require a lab to automatically notify it of accreditors’ revocations and probations. But most agencies haven’t done that, said Denise Driscoll, CAP’s senior director for accreditation and regulatory affairs.) In July of 2021, after a nonroutine inspection, CAP lifted the probation , writing that “the allegations are being appropriately addressed.”  Seven months after Averhealth’s probation ended, in 2022, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services learned from the DOJ that Averhealth was under investigation and had problems with accreditation. The Michigan agency immediately halted testing with Averhealth and told its workers to disregard the company’s results in any cases where they were the only evidence, according to court documents. (CAP agreed to give Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services records related to the probation after Michigan had already halted testing.) Averhealth didn’t comment on the agency directing its workers to disregard its drug tests as evidence. Court documents show emailed instructions from Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services to halt testing with Averhealth and disregard the company’s results as evidence. Highlighted by ProPublica The post A Child Welfare Agency Doubted the Accuracy of Drug Tests Used in Court. The Testing Company Dodged Questions. appeared first on ProPublica .

For over a year, we’ve been writing about pregnant women who have died in states that banned abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we’ve been trying to better understand: Who are the women who are most likely to suffer because of these new laws?  Many of the early cases we uncovered involved fast-moving emergencies. While women were miscarrying, they needed procedures to quickly empty their uterus, and, tragically, they didn’t get them in time. Yet we know that dangerous miscarriages like these are relatively rare events. What are far more common, experts have told us, are high-risk pregnancies, often on account of underlying health issues. Each year, hundreds of thousands of women enter pregnancy with chronic conditions that put them at an elevated risk of long-term complications and, in some cases, death. For those who live in states that have banned abortion, their options are now severely limited.   Our reporting has found that abortion bans generally don’t include exceptions that cover these kinds of health concerns — or if they do, doctors aren’t using them.  Instead, the exceptions are for the “life of the mother.” In practice, this often means doctors won’t act without strong evidence that their patients are very likely to die. Where there have been efforts to create broader health exceptions to cover a range of medical risks women can face in pregnancy, anti-abortion activists have fought against them . They argue that such exceptions are too permissive and could allow nearly anyone to get an abortion. Testifying at the Idaho state Capitol, one suggested that patients with headaches would be able to get abortions.  In recent months, we’ve reported on two recent cases that help illustrate how this narrow view of women’s health issues has life-or-death stakes.  Tierra Walker was a 37-year-old dental assistant and mother in Texas who found out she was unexpectedly pregnant in the fall of 2024. Hospitalized with uncontrolled blood pressure, she entered pregnancy sick and kept getting sicker. As she battled seizures and developed a dangerous blood clot, she became increasingly afraid for her health. Her blood pressure remained dangerously high, which doctors kept noting. She didn’t want to risk the possibility of leaving her 14-year-old son without his mother, her family told ProPublica.  Walker knew abortion was illegal in Texas, but like many people, she thought that hospitals could make exceptions for patients like her, whose health was clearly on the line.  Instead, her family said, despite Walker repeatedly asking if she should end the pregnancy to protect her health, none of her doctors counseled her on the option — or the health benefits — of a termination. More than 90 doctors were involved in her care, according to medical records.  On his 15th birthday, Walker’s son found her draped over her bed. At 20 weeks pregnant, she had died of preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy-related blood pressure disorder. We reviewed her medical records with more than a dozen OB-GYNs across the country, who said Walker’s death was preventable. They described her condition as a “ticking time bomb” and said severe preeclampsia was a predictable outcome. They were alarmed that Walker was never offered the option to terminate her pregnancy. Doctors involved in her care didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the hospitals she visited did not comment on her care. In another case we reported last week, in North Carolina in 2023, 34-year-old Ciji Graham learned she was newly pregnant at the same time that her heart condition began acting up. Her heart rhythm became rapid and irregular. Yet instead of offering to shock her heart, the treatment Graham had always received in the past, her cardiologist said she couldn’t because Graham was pregnant, according to medical records and text messages.  More than a dozen experts who reviewed her case for ProPublica said this was incorrect; the procedure, called a cardioversion, is safe during pregnancy. A second cardiologist didn’t perform an electrocardiogram to confirm her heart rate was normal, which experts said would have been best practice, and also sent her home. Neither doctor involved in her care responded to questions. A spokesperson for Cone Health, where Graham typically went for care, said its “treatment for pregnant women with underlying cardiac disease is consistent with accepted standards of care in our region.” Graham’s chest was hammering, she couldn’t sleep and she was short of breath. Although the risk of death was low, she wanted to protect her health and believed an abortion was her best option. She already had a son, and because of her illness, the birth was complicated. She wanted to get a procedure that could cure her heart condition before she had another child.  Read More A Pregnant Woman at Risk of Heart Failure Couldn’t Get Urgent Treatment. She Died Waiting for an Abortion. In North Carolina, abortion is still legal up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, but lawmakers had recently enacted a 72-hour waiting period that required two in-person visits, which was clogging up the clinics. The one abortion clinic in Graham’s city was also overrun with patients from nearby states that had instituted stricter abortion bans.  The earliest appointment Graham could get was two weeks away.  She didn’t have that long to wait. Four days later, she died. Neither of these mothers could get the care she needed. When the emergency arrived, it was too late.  The post Women With High-Risk Pregnancies Have Limited Options Under Abortion Bans appeared first on ProPublica .

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.” The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica. The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said. Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world. “Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity. Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist. The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues. The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela. But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security , according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names. Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.” International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.” Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto . National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations. Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country. But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions. The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens. “Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.” Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency. There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.” In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.” The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers. In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service. Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.” Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported. The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected. The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly. Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology. The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.” The post Trump Administration Orders USDA Employees to Investigate Foreign Researchers They Work With appeared first on ProPublica .

A judge in Milwaukee brought a 13-year quest for justice by a grieving father to a close on Thursday, accepting a plea deal for two men charged criminally for their role in the killing of his teenaged son.  Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole pleaded guilty to felony murder under a deferred prosecution agreement that allows them to avoid jail time yet publicly stand accountable for their actions leading to the 2012 death of Corey Stingley. The men helped restrain the 16-year-old inside a convenience store after an attempted shoplifting incident involving $12 worth of alcohol. “What happened to Corey Stingley should have never happened. His death was unnecessary, brutal and devastating,” Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne told the judge in a letter filed with the court.  Both of Stingley’s parents spoke directly to the judge in an hourlong hearing in a courtroom filled with family members, community activists, spiritual leaders and some of the teen’s former classmates.  “Corey was my baby. A mother is not supposed to bury her child,” Alicia Stingley told the judge. She spoke of the grace of forgiveness, and after the hearing she hugged Beringer. The Stingleys’ surviving son, Cameron, shook both men’s hands.  The agreement requires Cole and Beringer to make a one-time $500 donation each to a charitable organization of the Stingley family’s choosing in honor of Corey. After six months, if the two men comply with the terms and do not commit any crimes, the prosecution will dismiss the case, according to documents filed with the court.  ProPublica, in a 2023 story , reexamined the incident, the legal presumptions, the background of the men and Stingley’s father’s relentless legal campaign to bring the men into court. The three men previously had defended their actions as justified and necessary to deal with an emergency as they held Stingley while waiting for police to arrive. Ozanne, who was appointed in 2022 to review the case, recommended the agreement after the two men and the Stingley family engaged in an extensive restorative justice process, in which they sat face to face, under the supervision of a retired judge, and shared their thoughts and feelings. Ozanne said in the letter that the process “appears to have been healing for all involved.” From the bench, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello said she found the agreement to be fair and just and commended the work of all the parties to come to a resolution.  “Maybe this is the spark that makes other people see similarities in each other and not differences,” she said. “Maybe this is the spark that makes them think about restorative justice and how do we come together. And maybe this is part of the spark that decreases the violence in our community and leads us to finding the paths to have those circles to sit down and have the dialogue and to have that conversation. So maybe there’s some good that comes out of it.” Craig Stingley, Corey’s father, said during the hearing that his 13-year struggle “has turned into triumph.”  Earlier, the Stingley family filed a statement with the court affirming its support for the agreement and the restorative justice process.  “We sought not vengeance, but acknowledgement — of Corey’s life, his humanity, and the depth of our loss,” it states. “We believe this agreement honors Corey’s memory and offers a model of how people can come together, even after profound harm, to seek understanding and healing.”  The family remembered Stingley as a “vibrant, loving son, brother, and friend” and found that the restorative dialogues brought “truth, understanding, and a measure of healing that the traditional court process could not.”  Jonathan LaVoy, Cole’s attorney, told reporters after the hearing: “This has been a long 13 years. He’s been under investigation with multiple reviews over that time. I think everyone is just so happy that this day has come, that there’s been some finality to this whole situation.”  In a joint written statement provided to the court, Beringer and Cole said they came to recognize “the profound ripple effects” of the incident and their connection to Stingley’s death. They expressed sorrow that Stingley’s “time on this earth ended far too soon.” The proceeding followed years of work by Craig Stingley to force the justice system to view his son as a crime victim whose life was unlawfully cut short by Beringer, Cole and another store patron, Mario Laumann, who died in 2022.  Prosecutors at the time declined to charge anyone, saying the men did not intend to kill Corey Stingley when they tackled him and pinned him to the floor of VJ’s Food Mart, in West Allis, Wisconsin. They were detaining him for police after the youth attempted to steal bottles of Smirnoff Ice. In surveillance video, Laumann can be seen holding Stingley in a chokehold while the other two men aided in restraining him. A witness told police Laumann was “squeezing the hell” out of the teenager. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office found that Stingley died of a brain injury due to asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with multiple individuals.” It ruled the death a homicide. Under Wisconsin law, the charge of felony murder is brought in cases in which someone dies during the commission of another alleged crime — in this case false imprisonment.  Ozanne wrote to the court that his analysis found that “there is no doubt Cole, Beringer and Laumann caused Corey Stingley’s death.” All three men, he wrote, restrained Stingley “intentionally and without his consent” and without legal authority to “arrest” him. “Simply put, Corey, a teenager, was tackled and restrained to the ground by three grown men because they suspected him of shoplifting,” Ozanne wrote. “They killed him while piled on top of his body awaiting the police.”  But he noted that there is no evidence that Beringer or Cole knew that Stingley was in medical distress during the incident. He described their hold on him as “rudimentary detention techniques.”  It was Laumann, Ozanne concluded, who “strangled Corey Stingley to death.” Ozanne wrote that surveillance video shows Laumann’s arm for several minutes across Stingley’s neck “as he fades out of consciousness.”  If Laumann were still alive, Ozanne said in court, prosecutors likely would have been seeking a lengthy prison term for him. Defendant Jesse Cole sits in the courtroom on Thursday before a hearing on his case. Taylor Glascock for ProPublica Defendant Robert Beringer walks into the Milwaukee County courtroom. Taylor Glascock for ProPublica Stingley died the same year as Trayvon Martin, a Black Florida teen shot to death by a neighborhood volunteer watchman, who was acquitted in 2013. Martin’s case drew national attention and led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement. But Stingley’s death after being restrained by three white men did not garner widespread notice outside Wisconsin.  Over the years, Craig Stingley unsuccessfully advocated for the men to face charges. Two prosecutors reviewed the case, but nothing came of it.  He then discovered an obscure “John Doe” statute , dating back to Wisconsin’s territorial days, that allows a private citizen to ask a judge to consider whether a crime has been committed and, if so, by whom when a district attorney can’t or won’t do so. Stingley filed such a petition in late 2020. That led to the appointment of Ozanne as a special prosecutor to review the matter yet again. In 2024, Ozanne informed the Stingley family that his office had found evidence of a crime but that a guilty verdict was not assured for the remaining two men. That set in motion an effort to achieve healing and accountability through a restorative justice process. Restorative justice programs bring together survivors and offenders for conversations, led by trained facilitators, to work toward understanding and healing and how best to make amends. Last year, Stingley and members of his family met on separate occasions with both Cole and Beringer through the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the law school at Milwaukee’s Marquette University.  The discussions led to the deferred prosecution agreement. In an interview, Anthony Neff, a longtime friend of Craig Stingley’s, recalled seeing Corey Stingley in a hospital bed, attached to tubes and a ventilator in his final days. Corey Stingley had been a running back on his high school football team. Everyone in the program showed up for the funeral, Neff said.  “Coaches. The ball boys. The cheerleaders. I mean, they’re all standing in solidarity with Craig and the family,” he said.  In the years since, he and other golfing buddies of Craig Stingley’s have provided emotional support in his quest. Neff called it “a lesson in civics, a master lesson in civics.” The post A Black Teen Died Over a $12 Shoplifting Attempt. 13 Years Later, Two Men Plead Guilty in His Killing. appeared first on ProPublica .

When I first learned that a critical medication for transplant patients — one that keeps them alive — had generic versions that might not be effective, I called a specialty pharmacist at a hospital in Virginia. Adam Cochrane had written a journal article about the problems with the generics.  The drug is called tacrolimus, and it keeps a transplant patient’s body from rejecting a donated organ. I was surprised to hear that Cochrane had several patients he thought had died in part because their generic tacrolimus hadn’t worked right. He told me about Hannah Goetz, though he didn’t divulge her name initially. She would become the focus of a story I published recently that’s part of a larger investigation into how the Food and Drug Administration has for years allowed risky drugs into your medicine cabinet .  Hannah was 17 when she had a double lung transplant because of complications from cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that fills the organs with mucus. She died in 2023 at just 21 years old, he said. And she had been taking one of the bad generics.  He agreed to see if her mom would be willing to chat with me. When I met Holly Goetz at her home in Portsmouth, Virginia, she was open and personable. She was angry, too. Hannah had died too young. She welcomed the chance to tell her daughter’s story. “I was excited, because someone was going to research this issue,” Holly told me recently. “Possibly turn things around.” Before we’d met, she’d been told she didn’t have any legal recourse to sue over Hannah’s death despite the issue with the generic. Lawyers told Holly it was impossible to draw a straight line from Hannah’s death to a generic manufacturer. I knew that in telling Hannah’s story in detail, I’d also be telling the larger story about tacrolimus, and larger still about the systemic failures at the FDA. ProPublica’s reporting typically focuses on exposing wrongdoing in the hopes of spurring change. I wasn’t sure whether our reporting would bring Holly the accountability she yearned for, at least not in a tangible way. I hoped Holly’s experience sharing an intimate, tragic part of her life wouldn’t end up being a disappointment. Holly had been by Hannah’s side, advocating for her since she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and through the four-year journey after the transplant. Over several hours as the sky turned dark that February day, she took me through all that happened — from Hannah’s sudden need for a transplant where she almost died, to her doing well enough to take college courses and enjoy having her first (and only) real boyfriend, to her unexpected decline just three and half years after the successful transplant.  “It was hard, because I was reliving everything over again,” Holly said of our first interview at her home. “Then again, I got to talk to someone else about Hannah, who she was, not just her in the hospital.”  As she showed me Hannah’s peach bedroom that day, with its dozens of stuffed animals and the hair bows she wore every day when she was in school, Holly shared that when Hannah was a little girl she started sticking her tongue out in pictures. Holly laughed, saying she thought for sure Hannah would outgrow the habit, but it turned into her signature pose. Now, one of those pictures hangs from Holly’s rearview mirror in her car, one of many touchstones. There are photos and memorabilia of Hannah all over the house. I felt privileged to step into Holly’s own bedroom to see the pink urn with angel wings that holds Hannah’s ashes.  During our conversation, I realized that my reporting had given me access to key details about Hannah’s death that Holly didn’t know. I didn’t relish being the messenger who informed her that Hannah had taken not just one but actually two different suspect generic versions of tacrolimus, that she had the misfortune of exclusively taking ones that doctors, pharmacists or the FDA had found problematic. Holly’s eyes widened. I had to share, too, that the FDA had revoked one version’s generic status just two months after Hannah had died.  The two manufacturers of the generic medication Hannah was taking, companies named Accord and Dr. Reddy’s, both maintain that their tacrolimus is safe and effective. An Accord spokesperson said in a statement that the company cannot comment on individual cases but that it is “dedicated to patient safety, product quality and regulatory compliance.” Dr. Reddy’s said in a statement that it hasn’t received any complaints that “indicated any concerns in patient safety.”  The next day as I made the three-hour drive back to Washington, D.C., where I live, I called one of ProPublica’s managing editors, Tracy Weber, whom I’ve known for years. I cried as I described my conversation with Holly. One unavoidable aspect of my job is that I’m often asking people about the worst things that have happened to them. In my two decades as a reporter — quite a few of those years spent covering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — I’ve sat at many kitchen tables with grieving mothers. Talking with Holly, though, was the first time I’d done so as a mother myself. Her sorrow hit me differently.  Over the next nine months, I’d be a constant presence in Holly’s life. We texted hundreds of times. She dug up old photos and videos and gave me access to Hannah’s private Instagram account. One of the hardest moments was listening to a recording Holly sent of the doctors telling Hannah shortly before she died that they couldn’t give her a second transplant. The ask from an investigative reporter is never just, “Tell me about your loved one.” Our work requires meticulous detail and all the receipts. I had to recruit Holly to take considerable time to help with my reporting.  There were four years of medical care I needed to comb through to write the story, which meant asking Holly to track down records from two hospitals and, crucially, the pharmacy where Hannah had gotten all her medications. It wasn’t a simple task.  Hannah was an adult when she died, so Holly wasn’t automatically entitled to her records. Although Hannah had signed an advance directive giving Holly power of attorney before her death, including the ability to request records, Holly still couldn’t get access. She had to recruit a lawyer friend and attend probate court to get Hannah’s hospital records for me. “What I had to go through to get them was ridiculous,” Holly said. I first asked about the records in February. It took until May for her to get appointed as executor of Hannah’s estate, and then several more months for the hospitals and pharmacy to fulfil Holly’s request and send her the records. We didn’t have them until July.  There were upwards of 13,000 pages — all of which she shared with me. Sometimes, the records meant I had to ask uncomfortable questions of Holly. Why, for example, didn’t Hannah consistently take her medication for her pancreas? Did that mean she also didn’t take her tacrolimus? (Answers: She didn’t like how the pancreas drug made her feel, and Holly was so insistent on guaranteeing her daughter took her tacrolimus that she made her FaceTime when she took the pills away from home.) Holly was unfazed by even the most difficult questions. She and Hannah were alike that way: There was no shrinking from the world. Holly made my job a lot easier; she didn’t have to. I hesitated each time I had to reach out, wondering if texting about Hannah in the middle of the day would be jarring. What was it like for Holly to check her phone on her break from teaching high schoolers and be greeted with a message that would take her back to Hannah’s final days in the hospital? To my relief, Holly told me later she looked forward to my texts or calls. “I like sharing everything about Hannah,” she said.  Holly said she had agreed to talk to ProPublica because she thought speaking to me and the resulting story might bring her a sense of closure. Did it? I asked her.  “Yes, because more people know now what really happened,” she said. “The real story.” Read More How the FDA’s Lax Generic Drug Rules Put Her Life at Risk The post Her Daughter Died After Taking a Generic Version of a Lifesaving Drug. This Is What She Wants You to Know. appeared first on ProPublica .

When Ciji Graham visited a cardiologist on Nov. 14, 2023, her heart was pounding at 192 beats per minute, a rate healthy people her age usually reach during the peak of a sprint. She was having another episode of atrial fibrillation, a rapid, irregular heartbeat. The 34-year-old Greensboro, North Carolina, police officer was at risk of a stroke or heart failure.  In the past, doctors had always been able to shock Graham’s heart back into rhythm with a procedure called a cardioversion. But this time, the treatment was just out of reach. After a pregnancy test came back positive, the cardiologist didn’t offer to shock her. Graham texted her friend from the appointment: “Said she can’t cardiovert being pregnant.” The doctor told Graham to consult three other specialists and her primary care provider before returning in a week, according to medical records. Then she sent Graham home as her heart kept hammering.    Like hundreds of thousands of women each year who enter pregnancy with chronic conditions, Graham was left to navigate care in a country where medical options have significantly narrowed. As ProPublica has reported , doctors in states that ban abortion have repeatedly denied standard care to high-risk pregnant patients. The expert consensus is that cardioversion is safe during pregnancy , and ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen specialists who said they would have immediately admitted Graham to a hospital to get her heart rhythm under control. They found fault, too, with a second cardiologist she saw the following day, who did not perform an electrocardiogram and also sent her home. Although Graham’s family gave the doctors permission to speak with ProPublica, neither replied to ProPublica’s questions. Graham came to believe that the best way to protect her health was to end her unexpected pregnancy. But because of new abortion restrictions in North Carolina and nearby states, finding a doctor who could quickly perform a procedure would prove difficult. Many physicians and hospitals now hesitate to discuss abortion, even when women ask about it . And abortion clinics are not set up to treat certain medically complicated cases. As a result, sick pregnant women like Graham are often on their own. “I can’t feel like this for 9mo,” Graham wrote her friend. “I just can’t.”  She wouldn’t. In a region that had legislated its commitment to life, she would spend her final days struggling to find anyone to save hers.  Carolyn Graham holds a portrait of her daughter Ciji, who was a police officer. Andrea Ellen Reed for ProPublica Graham hated feeling out of breath; her life demanded all her energy. Widely admired for her skills behind the wheel, she was often called upon to train fellow officers at the Greensboro Police Department. At home, she needed to chase her 2-year-old son, SJ, around the apartment. She was a natural with kids — she’d helped her single mom raise her nine younger siblings. She thought her surprise pregnancy had caused the atrial fibrillation, also called A-fib. In addition to heart disease, she had a thyroid disorder; pregnancy could send the gland into overdrive, prompting dangerous heart rhythms.  When Graham saw the first cardiologist, Dr. Sabina Custovic, the 192 heart rate recorded on an EKG should have been a clear cause for alarm. “I can’t think of any situation where I would feel comfortable sending anyone home with a heart rate of 192,” said Dr. Jenna Skowronski, a cardiologist at the University of North Carolina. A dozen cardiologists and maternal-fetal medicine specialists who reviewed Graham’s case for ProPublica agreed. The risk of death was low, but the fact that she was also reporting symptoms — severe palpitations, trouble breathing — meant the health dangers were significant.  All the experts said they would have tried to treat Graham with IV medication in the hospital and, if that failed, an electrical shock. Cardioversion wouldn’t necessarily be simple — likely requiring an invasive ultrasound to check for blood clots beforehand — but it was crucial to slow down her heart. A leading global organization for arrhythmia professionals, the Heart Rhythm Society, has issued clear guidance that “ cardioversion is safe and effective in pregnancy .” Even if the procedure posed a small risk to the pregnancy, the risk of not treating Graham was far greater, said Rhode Island cardiologist Dr. Daniel Levine: “No mother, no baby.” Custovic did not answer ProPublica’s questions about why the pregnancy made her hold off on the treatment or whether abortion restrictions affect her decision-making.   The next day — as her heart continued to thump — Graham saw a second cardiologist, Dr. Will Camnitz, at Cone Health, one of the region’s largest health care systems.  According to medical records, Graham’s pulse registered as normal when taken at Camnitz’s office, as it had at her appointment the previous day. Camnitz noted that the EKG from the day before showed she was in A-fib and prescribed a blood thinner to prepare for a cardioversion in three weeks — if by then she hadn’t returned to a regular heart rhythm on her own.  Some of the experts who reviewed Graham’s care said that this was a reasonable plan if her pulse was, indeed, normal. But Camnitz, who specializes in the electrical activity of the heart, did not order another EKG to confirm that her heart rate had come down from 192, according to medical records. “He’s an electrophysiologist and he didn’t do that, which is insane,” said Dr. Kayle Shapero, a cardio-obstetrics specialist at Brown University. According to experts, a pulse measurement can underestimate the true heart rate of a patient in A-fib. Every cardiologist who reviewed Graham’s care for ProPublica said that a repeat EKG would be best practice. If Graham’s rate was still as high as it was the previous day, her heart could eventually stop delivering enough blood to major organs. Camnitz did not answer ProPublica’s questions about why he didn’t administer this test. Three weeks was a long time to wait with a heart that Graham kept saying was practically leaping out of her chest. Ciji Graham’s business card from the Greensboro Police Department hangs on the fridge in Shawn Scott’s home above a baby picture of their son, SJ. Graham used to leave love notes on the fridge for Scott before she left for work. Andrea Ellen Reed for ProPublica Camnitz knew about Graham’s pregnancy but did not discuss whether she wanted to continue it or advise her on her options, according to medical records. That same day, though, Graham reached out to A Woman’s Choice, the sole abortion clinic in Greensboro.  North Carolina bans abortion after 12 weeks; Graham was only about six weeks pregnant. Still, there was a long line ahead of her. Women were flooding the state from Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, where new abortion bans were even stricter. On top of that, a recent change in North Carolina law required an in-person consent visit three days before a termination. The same number of patients were now filling twice as many appointment slots.  Graham would need to wait nearly two weeks for an abortion.  It’s unclear if she explained her symptoms to the clinic; A Woman’s Choice spokesperson said it routinely discards appointment forms and no longer had a copy of Graham’s. But the spokesperson told ProPublica that a procedure at the clinic would not have been right for Graham; because of her high heart rate, she would have needed a hospital with more resources.  Dr. Jessica Tarleton, an abortion provider who spent the past few years working in the Carolinas, said she frequently encountered pregnant women with chronic conditions who faced this kind of catch-22: Their risks were too high to be treated in a clinic, and it would be safest to get care at a hospital, but it could be very hard to find one willing to terminate a pregnancy.  In states where abortions have been criminalized, many hospitals have shied away from sharing information about their policies on abortion. Cone Health, where Graham typically went for care, would not tell ProPublica whether its doctors perform abortions and under what circumstances; it said, “Cone Health provides personalized and individualized care to each patient based on their medical needs while complying with state and federal laws.”  Graham never learned that she would need an abortion at a hospital rather than a clinic. Physicians at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, the premier academic medical centers in the state, said that she would have been able to get one at their hospitals — but that would have required a doctor to connect her or for Graham to have somehow known to show up.   Had Graham lived in another country, she may not have faced this maze alone.  In the United Kingdom, for example, a doctor trained in caring for pregnant women with risky medical conditions would have been assigned to oversee all of Graham’s care, ensuring it was appropriate, said Dr. Marian Knight, who leads the U.K.’s maternal mortality review program. Hospitals in the U.K. also must abide by standardized national protocols or face regulatory consequences. Researchers point to these factors , as well as a national review system, as key to the country’s success in lowering its rate of maternal death. The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is more than double that of the U.K. and last on the list of wealthy countries. Graham’s friend Shameka Jackson could tell that something was wrong. Graham didn’t seem like her usual “perky and silly” self, Jackson said. On the phone, she sounded weak, her voice barely louder than a whisper.  When Jackson offered to come over, Graham said it would be a waste of time. “There’s nothing you can do but sit with me,” Jackson said she replied. “The doctors ain’t doing nothing.”  Graham no longer cooked or played with her son after work, said her boyfriend, Shawn Scott. She stopped hoisting SJ up to let him dunk on the hoop on the closet door. Now, she headed straight for the couch and barely spoke, except to say that no one would shock her heart.  “I hate feeling like this,” she texted Jackson. “Ain’t slept, chest hurts.”  “All I can do is wait until the 28th,” Graham said, the date of her scheduled abortion.  Scott sits on a bed in the apartment complex where he once lived with Graham. Andrea Ellen Reed for ProPublica On the morning of Nov. 19, Scott awoke to a rap on the front door of the apartment he and Graham shared. He’d been asleep on the couch after a night out with friends and thought that Graham had left for work.  A police officer introduced himself and explained that Graham hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering her phone. He knew she hadn’t been feeling well and wanted to check in.  Most mornings, Graham was up around 5 a.m. to prepare for the day. With Scott, she would brush SJ’s teeth, braid his hair and dress him in stylish outfits, complete with Jordans or Chelsea boots.  When Scott walked into their bedroom, Graham was face down in bed, her body cold when he touched her. The two men pulled her down to the floor to start CPR, but it was too late. SJ stood in his crib, silently watching as they realized.  The medical examiner would list Graham’s cause of death as “cardiac arrhythmia due to atrial fibrillation in the setting of recent pregnancy.” There was no autopsy, which could have identified the specific complication that led to her death.  Scott shows a collage of photos from his relationship with Graham. Andrea Ellen Reed for ProPublica High-risk pregnancy specialists and cardiologists who reviewed Graham’s case were taken aback by Custovic’s failure to act urgently. Many said her decisions reminded them of behaviors they’ve seen from other cardiologists when treating pregnant patients; they attribute this kind of hesitation to gaps in education. Although cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in pregnant women, a recent survey developed with the American College of Cardiology found that less than 30% of cardiologists reported formal training in managing heart conditions in pregnancy. “A large proportion of the cardiology workforce feels uncomfortable providing care to these patients,” the authors concluded in the Journal of the American Heart Association . The legal threats attached to abortion bans, many doctors have told ProPublica, have made some cardiologists even more conservative. Custovic did not answer ProPublica’s questions about whether she felt she had adequate training. A spokesperson for Cone Health, where Camnitz works, said, “Cone Health’s treatment for pregnant women with underlying cardiac disease is consistent with accepted standards of care in our region.” Although Graham’s family gave the hospital permission to discuss Graham’s care with ProPublica, the hospital did not comment on specifics.  Three doctors who have served on state maternal mortality review committees, which study the deaths of pregnant women, told ProPublica that Graham’s death was preventable. “There were so many points where they could have intervened,” said Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, a former member of Idaho’s panel. Shawn “SJ” Scott Jr. at his aunt’s house in Kannapolis, North Carolina Andrea Ellen Reed for ProPublica Graham’s is the seventh case ProPublica has investigated in which a pregnant woman in a state that significantly restricted abortion died after she was unable to access standard care.  The week after she died, Graham’s family held a candlelight ceremony outside of her high school, which drew friends and cops in uniform, and also Greensboro residents whose lives she had touched. One woman approached Graham’s sisters and explained Graham had interrupted her suicide attempt five years earlier and reassured her that her life had value; she had recently texted Graham, “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here today, expecting my first child.” As for Graham’s own son, no one explained to SJ that his mother had died. They didn’t know how to describe death to a toddler. Instead, his dad and grandmother and aunts and uncles told him that his mom had left Earth and gone to the moon. SJ now calls it the “Mommy moon.” For the past two years, every night before bed, he asks to go outside, even on the coldest winter evenings. He points to the moon in the dark sky and tells his mother that he loves her. The post A Pregnant Woman at Risk of Heart Failure Couldn’t Get Urgent Treatment. She Died Waiting for an Abortion. appeared first on ProPublica .

Last year, when Utah lawmakers passed the nation’s first statewide ban on community water fluoridation, they included a provision making it easier for people to get fluoride supplements without having to visit a dental provider. This would make fluoride available through individual choice, rather than “mass public dosing,” as a Utah House of Representatives webpage put it — part of the rising rhetoric of skepticism that’s led to rollbacks of water fluoridation, a proven method to reduce tooth decay. “It’s what I like to refer to as the win-win, right?” Speaker Mike Schultz said on a June episode of the “House Rules” podcast from the Utah House. “Those that want fluoride can now get fluoride easier, and those that don’t want fluoride in their drinking water don’t have to have that.” But even as critics point to fluoride supplements as an alternative — along with fluoride toothpaste, rinses and varnishes — many are creating barriers to these same products. Under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s oversight, the Food and Drug Administration said it issued notices to four businesses about their ingestible fluoride supplements for children and also put out new guidance for health professionals . In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton launched investigations into two large companies over their marketing of fluoride toothpaste to parents and children. And changes to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act threaten to make it harder than it already is for the most vulnerable people to access any oral health care at all, let alone fluoride treatments at a dentist’s office. More than anything, experts say, alarmist language from high-profile officials is trickling down to the public, leading more people to question whether any form of fluoride — in drinking water or in other treatments — is a good idea. Scott Tomar, a professor and associate dean at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry, is among those who have watched with dismay as the conversation about fluoride has been affected by arguments likely to scare people. “I’m certain that the net result of all of this is going to be a greater reluctance on the part of parents and providers to prescribe fluoride supplements,” Tomar said. Low, consistent exposure to fluoride is widely credited for dramatic declines in decaying teeth. But long-simmering skepticism about its use gained more influence in recent years, especially with Kennedy’s credibility and influence as the nation’s chief health officer. “The evidence against fluoride is overwhelming,” he said as he stood alongside Utah lawmakers at a press conference in Salt Lake City last April. Even though the science to support his conclusions is limited, he claimed that fluoride “causes IQ loss, profound IQ loss,” and he linked water fluoridation to ADHD, hypothyroidism, osteoarthritis, and kidney and liver issues. Lee Zeldin, who leads the Environmental Protection Agency, spoke at the Utah event, too, crediting Kennedy for helping to spur the agency’s review of its standard for fluoride in drinking water. An EPA spokesperson, in a statement to ProPublica, said that the agency’s “next analysis of new scientific information on potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water was not due until 2030, but this agency is moving at Trump Speed.” Meanwhile, the FDA is partnering with other federal agencies to develop what it called “a fluoride research agenda.” And, as part of a series of drastic cutbacks last spring, the Division of Oral Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was eliminated. In a statement emailed to ProPublica, an HHS spokesperson argued that fluoride’s “predominant benefit to teeth comes from topical contact with the outside of the teeth, not from ingestion. There is no need, therefore, to ingest fluoride.” Fluoride’s opponents cite a hotly debated “state of the science” report from the National Toxicology Program in 2024, saying that it shows an association between fluoride exposure and a lowered IQ in children. But those findings are not widely embraced because of the review’s limitations. It analyzed studies conducted outside the U.S., with different water conditions, and involving fluoride levels at more than twice the standard for drinking water here. The report itself states, in bold type, that it does not address “whether the sole exposure to fluoride added to drinking water” at the recommended level in the United States and Canada “is associated with a measurable effect on IQ.” In this atmosphere, as ProPublica has reported , there’s been widespread wavering on water fluoridation, even in Michigan, where the treatment debuted more than 80 years ago. Florida joined Utah in banning fluoridation statewide. Bills to do the same were introduced in at least 19 other states last year, and that momentum is carrying forward, with statewide bans recently proposed in Arizona and South Carolina. Meanwhile, local debates over fluoridation are turning raucous . Utah’s dental professionals are concerned about how to stave off an expected hit to oral health, as other communities experienced when they cut off fluoridation. “We get heartburn over the situation,” said James Bekker, a pediatric dentist and past president of the Utah Dental Association. Gov. Spencer Cox signed HB 81 into law in 2025, making Utah the first state to ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water. Utah State Legislature Bekker and others are piecing together ways to provide other forms of fluoride treatment to Utahns. But he’s worried, he said, about “all these susceptible, vulnerable children in underserved populations that don’t have a choice and don’t have a voice, but they are going to suffer.” Shortly after Utah banned fluoridation, the FDA took aim at the kind of supplements that lawmakers had presented as a key alternative. The agency announced that it was working to remove certain ingestible fluoride products for children from the market. Its press release described associations with changes to the gut microbiome, thyroid disorders, weight gain “and possibly decreased IQ.” More than 4,600 public comments poured into the FDA, including many from people worried about losing access to supplements while simultaneously losing water fluoridation. “Now that fluoride has been removed from much of Utah’s water, it is imperative to provide supplementation through other means,” one orthodontist wrote. A dentist in South Florida criticized the scare tactics and bad science leading states like hers to ban fluoridation and said that prescribing fluoride drops and lozenges is one of the few alternatives for pediatric patients. On Oct. 31, the FDA announced efforts to “restrict the sale of unapproved ingestible fluoride prescription drug products for children.” The agency said it sent notices to four companies about marketing the supplements for children under 3 and older children with moderate or low risk for tooth decay. It also said it issued letters to health care professionals “warning about the risks associated with these products.” Even though the FDA landed short of a ban, Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, called the agency’s shift a “major victory.” He said he believes it’s just the start of federal action to limit the use of fluoride products that FAN has long campaigned against. Fluoride supplements, which emerged in the 1940s alongside water fluoridation, never went through an FDA review. A decade ago, Cooper said, FAN submitted a citizens petition that called for the agency to pull ingestible fluoride supplements from the market. “What we’re seeing is that come to fruition,” he said, “because we finally have FDA employees who were willing to look at the issue.” The FDA’s stance on supplements is now at odds with several health organizations, including the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Several of them jointly support a graduated fluoride supplementation schedule that starts at six months for high-risk children. Johnny Johnson, a retired pediatric dentist in Florida, questions the FDA’s risk parameters. “If you don’t have fluoride at appropriate levels in your water, by definition, you are at high risk” of tooth decay, said Johnson, who heads the nonprofit American Fluoridation Society. The FDA’s letter to health professionals recommends topical fluoride as an alternative, such as toothpaste. But even that method faces scrutiny. The Texas attorney general’s office launched investigations into Colgate-Palmolive and Procter & Gamble, which sell Colgate and Crest fluoride toothpastes. Their marketing to parents and children is “misleading, deceptive and dangerous,” Paxton’s office said in a press release . Referencing the NTP report on fluoridation, the release said the investigation came “amid a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating that excessive fluoride exposure is not safe for children.” In September, Paxton’s office announced a “historic agreement” with Colgate-Palmolive. When its packaging and promotional material for children’s fluoride toothpaste shows the paste on a brush, the company will display a pea-sized amount, rather than the traditional swirl. This month, Paxton’s office reported a similar settlement with Procter & Gamble. A representative from Colgate-Palmolive said in a statement to ProPubica that Paxton’s press release acknowledged that “we already provide directions on our packaging that complies with U.S. FDA requirements for how our children’s fluoride toothpastes should be used.” Procter & Gamble said in a statement that “the Texas Attorney General acknowledged in the settlement that our products comply with all laws and regulations regarding directions for use.” Another tool for fluoride treatment is varnish applied during a dental checkup, which may be provided at free or reduced cost through insurance programs. But even with health coverage, there are barriers that often make it difficult to see the dentists and pediatricians providing such treatment. Recent research found that insurance denials for fluoride varnish applications can add another layer of complication for patients and providers. Supplemental fluoride treatments are limited, compared with the effectiveness, reach and cost of fluoride in drinking water, said Johnson, the retired pediatric dentist, but “it is the only option that we have in Florida and in Utah.” “Nothing replaces fluoridated water,” he added. “Nothing comes close.” The post After Sowing Distrust in Fluoridated Water, Kennedy and Skeptics Turn to Obstructing Other Fluoride Sources appeared first on ProPublica .

The quest for justice dominated his life.  He gathered police reports, witness statements and other evidence in the Dec. 14, 2012, fatal incident inside a Milwaukee-area convenience store. The youth had tried to shoplift $12 worth of flavored malt beverages at the shop before abandoning the items and turning to leave. That’s when three men wrestled him to the ground to hold him for the police.  The medical examiner determined that he died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with multiple individuals.” The manner of death: homicide.  When prosecutors chose not to charge anyone, Stingley waged a legal campaign of his own that forced the case to be reexamined. A 2023 ProPublica investigation pieced together a detailed timeline of what happened inside the store, recounted what witnesses saw and examined the backgrounds of the three customers involved in the altercation. Finally, this week, in an extraordinary turn of events, Stingley will see a measure of accountability. On Monday, a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court charged the surviving patrons — Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole — with felony murder. The defendants are set to appear in court on Thursday.  Beringer’s attorney, Tony Cotton, described the broad outlines of a deferred prosecution agreement that can lead to the charges being dismissed after the two men plead guilty or no contest. The men may be required by the court to make a contribution to a charity in honor of Corey Stingley and to perform community service, avoiding prison time, according to Cotton and Craig Stingley. In Wisconsin, felony murder is a special category for incidents in which the commission of a serious crime — in this case, false imprisonment — causes the death of another person. The prosecutor’s office in Dane County, which is handling the matter, declined to comment. Cole’s attorney said his client had no comment. Previously, the three men have argued that their actions were justified, citing self-defense and their need to respond to an emergency.  For Stingley, a key part of the accountability process already has taken place. Last year, as part of a restorative justice program and under the supervision of a retired judge, Stingley and the two men interacted face to face in separate meetings. There, inside an office on a Milwaukee college campus, they confronted the traumatic events that led to Corey Stingley’s death and the still-roiling feelings of resentment, sorrow and pain.  Craig Stingley said he felt that, after years of downplaying their role, the men showed regret and a deeper understanding of what had happened. For instance, Stingley said, he and Cole aired out their different perspectives on what occurred and even reviewed store surveillance video together.  “I have never been able to breathe as clearly and as deeply and feel as free as I have after that meeting was over,” Stingley said.  Restorative justice programs bring together survivors and offenders — via meetings or letters or through community panels — to try to deepen understanding, promote healing and discuss how best to make amends for a wide range of harms. The approach has been used by schools and juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as nations grappling with large-scale atrocities. Situations where restorative justice and deferred prosecution are employed for such serious charges are rare, Cotton said. But, he said, the whole case is rare — from the prosecution declining to issue charges initially to holding it open for multiple reviews over a decade.  “Our hearts go out to the Stingley family, and we believe that the restorative justice process has allowed all sides to express their feelings openly,” Cotton said. “We are glad that a fair and just outcome has been achieved.” A medical examiner determined that Corey Stingley died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after an altercation with three men at a convenience store in 2012. Prosecutors assigned to the case declined to press charges. Taylor Glascock for ProPublica The Legal Quest Milwaukee’s district attorney at the time of Corey Stingley’s death, John Chisholm, announced there would be no charges 13 months later, in January 2014. Cole, Beringer and a third man, Mario Laumann, now deceased, were not culpable because they did not intend to injure or kill the teen and weren’t trained in proper restraint techniques, Chisholm determined. Craig Stingley, who is Black, and others in the community protested the decision , claiming the three men — all white — were not good Samaritans but had acted violently to kill a Black youth with impunity. “When a person loses his life at the hands of others, it would seem that a ‘chargeable’ offense has occurred,” the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP said in a statement at the time. Looking for a way to reopen the case, Stingley reexamined the evidence, including security video. In a painful exercise, he watched the takedown of his son, by his estimation hundreds of times, analyzing who did what, frame by frame. What he saw only reinforced his view that his son’s death was unnecessary and his right to due process denied. Corey Stingley and his father lived only blocks from VJ’s Food Mart, in West Allis, Wisconsin. That December day, Stingley made his way to the back of the store and stuck six bottles of Smirnoff Ice into his backpack. At the front counter, the teenager provided his debit card to pay for an energy drink, but the clerk demanded the stolen items. Stingley surrendered the backpack, reached toward the cash register to recover his debit card, then turned to exit. Cole told police he extended his hand to stop Stingley and claimed that the teen punched him in the face, though it is not evident on the video. The three men grabbed the youth. During a struggle, the men pinned Stingley to the floor.  Laumann kept Stingley in a chokehold, several witnesses told investigators. ProPublica later discovered that Laumann had been a Marine. His brother told ProPublica he likely learned how to apply chokeholds as part of his military service decades ago.  Beringer had Stingley by the hair and was pressing on the teen’s head, a witness told authorities. Cole helped to hold Stingley down. Eventually, Stingley stopped resisting. The police report states that Cole thought the teen was “playing limp” to trick them into loosening their grip. “Get up, you punk!” Laumann told the motionless teen when an officer finally arrived, according to a police report. Stingley was foaming at the mouth and had urinated through his clothes. The officer couldn’t find a pulse. Stingley never regained consciousness, dying at a hospital two weeks later. Corey Stingley, far right, with his siblings in a 2010 portrait. He was 16 at the time of his death. Courtesy of Craig Stingley Craig Stingley unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Chisholm in 2015 to discuss the lack of charges. “Feel free to seek legal advice in the private sector regarding your Constitutional Rights,” an assistant to Chisholm replied to Stingley in an email. “I extend my deepest sympathy to you and your family!” Stingley’s review of the video, however, did bring about another legal opportunity in 2017, after he notified West Allis police that there was footage showing Laumann with his arm around the teen’s throat. (Laumann had denied putting him in a headlock.) A Racine County district attorney was appointed to review the evidence again. She issued no report for three years, until pressed by the court, then concluded that no charges were warranted.  Finally, Stingley discovered an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe” statute. It allows private citizens to petition a judge to consider whether a crime had been committed if a district attorney refuses to issue a criminal complaint. A former process engineer for an electrical transformer manufacturer, Stingley had no legal training. Still, in November 2020, he filed a 14-page petition with the then-chief judge of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Mary Triggiano. It cited legal authority and “material facts,” including excerpts from police reports, witness statements and stills from the surveillance video. Stingley quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the petition and the British statesman William Gladstone: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” That led to the appointment in July 2022 of Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to review the case. But that process was slowed by procedural hurdles. Stingley took the delays in stride, saying he trusted that Ozanne and his staff were treating the matter seriously and acting appropriately. In 2024, Stingley said, Ozanne’s office advised him that they had found sufficient evidence to issue charges against Cole and Beringer but could not guarantee that a jury would deliver a guilty verdict. Stingley, researching the family’s options, said he inquired about the restorative justice process. The DA’s office supported the idea, arranging for him and the two men to meet under the supervision of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the law school at Milwaukee’s Marquette University. The program is run by Triggiano, who’d retired from the court. The concept of restorative justice can be traced back to indigenous cultures, where people sat together to talk through conflict and solve problems. It emerged in the United States in criminal justice systems in the 1970s as a way to provide alternatives to prison and restitution to victims. Elsewhere, it has notably been used to address the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, where beginning in 2002 truth-telling forums led to forgiveness and reconciliation. Stingley, who has three remaining grown children and four grandchildren, desperately wanted “balance restored” for his family. He decided the best path forward was to meet with the men he considered responsible for his son’s death. Stingley now sees the charges as a message of accountability in his son’s case. Taylor Glascock for ProPublica The Quest for Closure Stingley brought photos of Corey to the restorative justice meeting with Berringer in April. The goal: to respectfully share their perspectives on the tragedy and how it impacted each of them personally. What was said was not recorded or transcribed. It was not for use in any court proceeding.  The sessions began with the Stingley family sharing heartfelt stories about Corey as a son, brother, student and friend. They spoke of their great bond, Corey’s love of sports and their struggle to cope with his absence.  When discussion turned to what happened in the store, Stingley said, Berringer described having only faint memories of the fatal encounter. He recalled a brief struggle and grabbing the teen by his jacket, not his hair.  Before departing the meeting, a tearful Beringer told Stingley he was looking for peace, Stingley recalled. Cotton, Beringer’s attorney, told ProPublica that the incident and the legal steps affected his client in profound ways. “He’s had anxiety really from this from day one,” Cotton said. The result, he said: “Sleeplessness. Horrible anxiety. Fearful because he has to go to court.” Does the resolution ease Beringer’s mind? “I don’t know,” Cotton said, adding that the hope is that the Stingley family finds solace in the resolution process. Cole, in a meeting in May with Stingley and some of his family, brought a gift: a pair of angel wings on a gold chain with a small “C” charm and several clear reflective orbs. With it came a handwritten note, saying: “I hope this sun catcher brings a gentle reflection of the love & light of Corey’s memory and that you feel his presence shining on you each day.”  “I told him I appreciate the gesture,” Stingley said. Cole, according to Stingley, told him that he felt something other than the altercation — perhaps some health ailment — led to Corey’s demise. Stingley invited Cole to watch the surveillance video together at a second session. As that day neared, in July, Stingley considered backing out. “It was almost as if I had to drag myself up out of the car,” he said. But he said he realized that he’d been preparing for such an event for 13 years: to come to some honest reckoning with the men involved.  After watching the video, he and Cole reviewed the death certificate, showing the medical examiner’s conclusions. Stingley said Cole stressed that he did not choke Corey but came to realize that what happened in the store caused the teen to lose his life, not any preexisting condition. The acknowledgment eased Stingley’s burden. “I felt like I was reaching a place where I was finally going to get the justice that I’ve been pursuing,” Stingley said, “and this is one of the steps I had to go through to get that completed.” Triggiano commended each of the participants for their courage in meeting and the Stingley family for “seeking the humanity of their son as opposed to vengeance.” She said Beringer and Cole “keenly listened, reflected and really acknowledged their connection to the events that led to Corey’s death.”  “The conversations were emotional and difficult but deeply human,” she said. After the loss of his son, Stingley wanted to see the three men imprisoned. But so many years later, justice now looks different. Now Laumann is dead. Beringer is changed by the experience. And Cole is a father eager to protect his own children.  Now, in Stingley’s eyes, prison is beside the point. Criminal charges will stand instead as a strong signal of accountability, of justice — and of a father’s unyielding love. The post A Father’s Quest for Justice Finds Resolution After 13 Years appeared first on ProPublica .

Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns. An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck , choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out . An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing . After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis — less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week — police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow. But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Examples are scattered across social media. ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret. The government won’t say if any of them have been punished. In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “ unless deadly force is authorized .” About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed. Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation. We reviewed footage with a panel of eight former police officers and law enforcement experts. They were appalled. This is what bad policing looks like, they said. And it puts everyone at risk. “I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters — some of them will resist,” said Eric Balliet, who spent more than two decades working at Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, including in the first Trump administration. “I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period.” “If this was one of my officers, he or she would be facing discipline,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a longtime police chief in Seattle who also served as Customs and Border Protection commissioner under President Barack Obama. “You have these guys running around in fatigues, with masks, with ‘Police’ on their uniform,” but they aren’t acting like professional police. Over the past week, the conduct of agents has come under intense scrutiny after an ICE officer in Minneapolis killed Good, a mother of three. The next day, a Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot a man and woman in a hospital parking lot. Top administration officials rushed to defend the officers. Speaking about the agent who shot Good, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, “This is an experienced officer who followed his training.” Officials said the same thing to us after we showed them footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds. Federal agents have “followed their training to use the least amount of force necessary,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. Both DHS and the White House lauded the “utmost professionalism” of their agents. Our compilation of incidents is far from complete. Just as the government does not count how often it detains citizens or smashes through vehicle windows during immigration arrests, it does not publicly track how many times agents have choked civilians or otherwise inhibited their breathing or blood flow. We gathered cases by searching legal filings, social media posts and local press reports in English and Spanish. Given the lack of any count over time, it’s impossible to know for certain how agents’ current use of the banned and dangerous tactics compares with earlier periods. But former immigration officials told us they rarely heard of such incidents during their long tenures. They also recalled little pushback when DHS formally banned chokeholds and other tactics in 2023; it was merely codifying the norm. That norm has now been broken. One of the citizens whom agents put in a chokehold was 16 years old. American citizen Arnoldo Bazan was hospitalized after being choked and pinned to the ground at a restaurant supply store in Houston during the arrest of his father nearby. Courtesy of the Bazan family Tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan and his father were getting McDonald’s before school when their car was pulled over by unmarked vehicles. Masked immigration agents started banging on their windows. As Arnoldo’s undocumented father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, drove off, the terrified teenager began filming on his phone. The video shows the agents repeatedly ramming the Bazans’ car during a slow chase through the city. Bazan Carrillo eventually parked and ran into a restaurant supply store. When Arnoldo saw agents taking his father violently to the ground, Arnoldo went inside too, yelling at the agents to stop. One agent put Arnoldo in a chokehold while another pressed a knee into his father’s neck. “I was going to school!” the boy pleaded. He said later that when he told the agent he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop. “I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica, showing where the agent’s hands had closed around his throat. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.” DHS’ McLaughlin accused Arnoldo’s dad of ramming his car “into a federal law enforcement vehicle,” but he was never charged for that, and the videos we reviewed do not support this claim. Our examination of his criminal history — separate from any immigration violations — found only that Bazan Carrillo pleaded guilty a decade ago to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated. McLaughlin also said the younger Bazan elbowed an officer in the face as he was detained, which the teen denies. She said that Arnoldo was taken into custody to confirm his identity and make sure he didn’t have any weapons. McLaughlin did not answer whether the agent’s conduct was justified. Experts who reviewed video of the Bazans’ arrests could make no sense of the agents’ actions. “Why are you in the middle of a store trying to grab somebody?” said Marc Brown, a former police officer turned instructor who taught ICE and Border Patrol officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. “Your arm underneath the neck, like a choking motion? No! The knee on the neck? Absolutely not.” DHS revamped its training curriculum after George Floyd’s murder to underscore those tactics were out of bounds, Brown said. “DHS specifically was very big on no choking,” he said. “We don’t teach that. They were, like, hardcore against it. They didn’t want to see anything with the word ‘choke.’” After agents used another banned neck restraint — a carotid hold — a man started convulsing and passed out. Officers used a carotid hold on Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera while arresting his wife in Massachusetts. Newsflare In early November, ICE agents in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, stopped a young father, Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera, as he drove with his family. They had come for his undocumented wife, whom they targeted after she was charged with assault for allegedly stabbing a co-worker in the hand with scissors. Body camera footage from the local police, obtained by ProPublica, captured much of what happened. The couple’s 1-year-old daughter began crying. Agents surrounded the car, looking in through open doors. According to the footage, an agent told Zapata Rivera that if his wife wouldn’t come out, they would have to arrest him, too — and their daughter would be sent into the foster system. The agent recounted the conversation to a local cop: “Technically, I can arrest both of you,” he said. “If you no longer have a child, because the child is now in state custody, you’re both gonna be arrested. Do you want to give your child to the state?” Zapata Rivera, who has a pending asylum claim, clung to his family. His wife kept saying she wouldn’t go anywhere without her daughter, whom she said was still breastfeeding. Zapata Rivera wouldn’t let go of either of them. Federal agents seemed conflicted on how to proceed. “I refuse to have us videotaped throwing someone to the ground while they have a child in their hands,” one ICE agent told a police officer at the scene. But after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed. The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death . “Even milliseconds or seconds of interrupted blood flow to the brain can have serious consequences,” Dr. Altaf Saadi, a neurologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told us. Saadi said she couldn’t comment on specific cases, “but there is no amount of training or method of applying pressure on the neck that is foolproof in terms of avoiding neurologic damage.” In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him. Video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest shows him shaking violently while suffering an apparent seizure in the front seat of his car, with officers continuing to attempt the arrest. Newsflare “Carotid restraints are prohibited unless deadly force is authorized,” DHS’ use-of-force policy states. Deadly force is authorized only when an officer believes there’s an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” and there is “no alternative.” In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said. “These statements were lies,” Zapata Rivera alleges in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit he filed against the ICE agent who used the carotid restraint. His lawyer told ProPublica that Zapata Rivera was disoriented after regaining consciousness; the lawsuit says he was denied medical attention. (Representatives for Zapata Rivera declined our requests for an interview with him. His wife has been released on bond, and her assault case awaits trial.) A police report and bodycam footage from Fitchburg officers at the scene, obtained via a public records request, back up Zapata Rivera’s account of being denied assistance. “He’s fine,” an agent told paramedics, according to footage. The police report says Zapata Rivera wanted medical attention but “agents continued without stopping.” Saadi, the Harvard neurologist, said that as a general matter, determining whether someone had a seizure is “not something even neurologists can do accurately just by looking at it.” DHS policy bars using chokeholds and carotid restraints just because someone is resisting arrest. Agents are doing it anyway. Federal officers arrested American citizen Luis Hipolito with a chokehold, pinning him to the ground in Los Angeles on June 24. @the_moxie_report When DHS issued restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints, it stated that the moves “must not be used as a means to control non-compliant subjects or persons resisting arrest.” Deadly force “shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.” But videos reviewed by ProPublica show that agents have been using these restraints to do just that. In Los Angeles in June, masked officers from ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agencies pepper-sprayed and then tackled another citizen, Luis Hipolito. As Hipolito struggled to get away, one of the agents put him in a chokehold. Another pointed a Taser at bystanders filming. Then Hipolito’s body began to convulse — a possible seizure. An onlooker warned the agents, “You gonna let him die.” In the video of Hipolito’s arrest, four agents can be seen pulling at his body, choking him and pinning him to the pavement. @the_moxie_report When officers make a mistake in the heat of the moment, said Danny Murphy, a former deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, they need to “correct it as quickly as possible.” That didn’t happen in Hipolito’s case. The footage shows the immigration agent not only wrapping his arm around Hipolito’s neck as he takes him down but also sticking with the chokehold after Hipolito is pinned on the ground. The agent’s actions are “dangerous and unreasonable,” Murphy said. Asked about the case, McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said that Hipolito was arrested for assaulting an ICE officer. Hipolito’s lawyers did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. According to the Los Angeles Times, Hipolito limped into court days after the incident . Another citizen who was with him the day of the incident was also charged, but her case was dropped. Hipolito pleaded not guilty and goes to trial in February. Some of the conduct in the footage isn’t banned — but it’s discouraged and dangerous. An officer kneels on the neck of nurse and activist Amanda Trebach, a U.S. citizen, during an arrest in Los Angeles. Courtesy of Union del Barrio A video from Los Angeles shows a Colombian-born TikTokker who often filmed ICE apparently passed out after officers pulled her from her Tesla and knelt on her neck . Another video shows a DoorDash driver in Portland, Oregon, screaming for air as four officers pin him face down in the street . “Aire, aire, aire,” he says. “No puedo respirar” — I can’t breathe. Then: “Estoy muriendo” — I’m dying. A third video, from Chicago, shows an agent straddling a citizen and repeatedly pressing his face into the asphalt . Onlookers yell that the man can’t breathe. Placing a knee on a prone subject’s neck or weight on their back isn’t banned under DHS’ use-of-force policy, but it can be dangerous — and the longer it goes on, the higher the risk that the person won’t be able to breathe. “You really don’t want to spend that amount of time just trying to get somebody handcuffed,” said Kerlikowske, the former CPB commissioner, of the video of the arrest in Portland. Brown, the former federal instructor and now a lead police trainer at the University of South Carolina, echoed that. “Once you get them handcuffed, you get them up, get them out of there,” he said. “If they’re saying they can’t breathe, hurry up.” DoorDash driver Victor José Brito Vallejo was pinned to the ground by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, on Sept. 11. The Oregonian Taking a person down to the ground and restraining them there can be an appropriate way to get them in handcuffs, said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer turned law professor who also works at the University of South Carolina. But officers have long known to make it quick. By the mid-1990s, the federal government was advising officers against keeping people prolongedly in a prone position. When a federal agent kneeled on the neck of an intensive care nurse in August, she said she understood the danger she was in and tried to scream. “I knew that the amount of pressure being placed on the back of my neck could definitely hurt me,” said Amanda Trebach, a citizen and activist who was arrested in Los Angeles while monitoring immigration agents. “I was having a hard time breathing because my chest was on the ground.” McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Trebach impeded agents’ vehicles and struck them with her signs and fists. Trebach denies this. She was released without any charges. Protesters have also been choked and strangled. A Border Patrol agent chokes and then slams down a protester in Chicago on Oct. 7. Storyful In the fall, a protester in Chicago refused to stand back after a federal agent told him to do so. Suddenly, the agent grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him to the ground . “No, no!” one bystander exclaims. “He’s not doing anything!” DHS’ McLaughlin did not respond to questions about the incident. Along with two similar choking incidents at protests outside of ICE facilities, this is one of the few videos in which the run-up to the violence is clear. And the experts were aghast. “Without anything I could see as even remotely a deadly force threat, he immediately goes for the throat,” said Ashley Heiberger, a retired police captain from Pennsylvania who frequently testifies in use-of-force cases. Balliet, the former immigration official, said the agent turned the scene into a “pissing contest” that was “explicitly out of control.” “It’s so clearly excessive and ridiculous,” Murphy said. “That’s the kind of action which should get you fired.” “How big a threat did you think he was?” Brown said, noting that the officer slung his rifle around his back before grabbing and body-slamming the protester. “You can’t go grab someone just because they say, ‘F the police.’” Roving patrols + unplanned arrests = unsafe tactics. Two federal officers arrest a construction worker in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Nov. 19. Ryan Murphy/Getty Images In November, Border Patrol agents rushed into the construction site of a future Panda Express in Charlotte, North Carolina, to check workers’ papers. When one man tried to run, an officer put him in a chokehold and later marched him out, bloodied, to a waiting SUV. The Charlotte operation was one of Border Patrol’s many forays into American cities, as agents led by commander-at-large Gregory Bovino claimed to target “criminal illegal aliens” but frequently chased down landscapers , construction workers and U.S. citizens in roving patrols through predominantly immigrant or Latino communities. Freelance photographer Ryan Murphy , who had been following Border Patrol’s convoys around Charlotte, documented the Panda Express arrest. “Their tactics are less sophisticated than you would think,” he told ProPublica. “They sort of drive along the streets, and if they see somebody who looks to them like they could potentially be undocumented, they pull over.” Experts told ProPublica that if officers are targeting a specific individual, they can minimize risks by deciding when, where and how to take them into custody. But when they don’t know their target in advance, chaos — and abuse — can follow. “They are encountering people they don’t know anything about,” said Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director at ICE. “The stuff that I’ve been seeing in the videos,” Kerlikowske said, “has been just ragtag, random.” There may be other factors, too, our experts said, including quotas and a lack of consequences amid gutted oversight . With officers wearing masks, Shuchart said, “even if they punch grandma in the face, they won’t be identified.” As they sweep into American cities, immigration officers are unconstrained — and, the experts said, unprepared. Even well-trained officers may not be trained for the environments where they now operate. Patrolling a little-populated border region takes one set of skills. Working in urban areas, where citizens — and protesters — abound , takes another. DHS and Bovino did not respond to questions about their agents’ preparation or about the chokehold in Charlotte. Experts may think there’s abuse. But holding officers to account? That’s another matter. Arnoldo, 16, and his sister, Maria Bazan, 27, at their home in Houston. Maria brought her brother to the hospital after his detention by federal officers. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica Back in Houston, immigration officers dropped 16-year-old Arnoldo off at the doorstep of his family home a few hours after the arrest. His neck was bruised, and his new shirt was shredded. Videos taken by his older sisters show the soccer star struggling to speak through sobs. Uncertain what exactly had happened to him, his sister Maria Bazan took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff identified signs of the chokehold and moved him to the trauma unit. Hospital records show he was given morphine for pain and that doctors ordered a dozen CT scans and X-rays, including of his neck, spine and head. From the hospital, Maria called the Houston Police Department and tried to file a report, the family said. After several unsuccessful attempts, she took Arnoldo to the department in person, where she says officers were skeptical of the account and their own ability to investigate federal agents. Arnoldo had filmed much of the incident, but agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center. The footage, which ProPublica has reviewed, backed the family’s account of the chase. After Arnoldo was choked by a federal officer, his sister took him to the hospital, where doctors quickly moved him to the trauma unit. Courtesy of the Bazan family The family says Houston police still haven’t interviewed them. A department spokesperson told ProPublica it was not investigating the case, referring questions to DHS. But the police have also not released bodycam footage and case files aside from a top sheet, citing an open investigation. “We can’t do anything,” Maria said one officer told her. “What can HPD do to federal agents?” Elsewhere in the country, some officials are trying to hold federal immigration officers to account. In California, the state Legislature passed bills prohibiting immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring them to display identification during operations. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that allows residents to sue any officer who violates state or federal constitutional rights. (The Trump administration quickly filed legal challenges against California and Illinois, claiming their new laws are unconstitutional.) In Colorado, Durango’s police chief saw a recent video of an immigration officer using a chokehold on a protester and reported it to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation , which announced it was looking into the incident. In Minnesota, state and local leaders are collecting evidence in Renee Good’s killing even as the federal government cut the state out of its investigation. Arnoldo is still waiting for Houston authorities to help him, still terrified that a masked agent will come first. Amid soccer practice and making up schoolwork he missed while recovering, he watches and rewatches the videos from that day. The car chase, the chokehold, his own screams at the officers to leave his dad alone. His father in the driver’s seat, calmly handing Arnoldo his wallet and phone while stopping mid-chase for red lights. The Bazan family said agents threatened to charge Arnoldo if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. DHS spokesperson McLaughlin did not respond when asked about the alleged threat. Arnoldo’s dad is now in Mexico.  Asked why an officer choked Arnoldo, McLaughlin pointed to the boy’s alleged assault with his elbow, adding, “The federal law enforcement officer graciously chose not to press charges.” How We Did It ProPublica journalists Nicole Foy, McKenzie Funk, Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar gathered videos via Spanish and English social media posts, local press reports and court records. We then sent a selection of these videos to eight police experts and former immigration officials, along with as much information as we could gather about the lead-up to and context of each incident. The experts analyzed the videos with us, explaining when and how officers used dangerous tactics that appeared to go against their training or that have been banned under the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy. We also tried to contact every person we could identify being choked or kneeled on. In some cases, we also reached out to bystanders. Research reporter Mariam Elba conducted criminal record searches of every person we featured in this story. She also attempted to fact-check the allegations that DHS made about the civilians and their arrests. Our findings are not comprehensive because there is no universal criminal record database. We also sent every video cited in this story to the White House, DHS, CBP, ICE, border czar Tom Homan and Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin provided a statement responding to some of the incidents we found but she did not explain why agents used banned tactics or whether any of the agents have been disciplined for doing so. The post We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing appeared first on ProPublica .

The federal government allows livestock grazing across an area of publicly owned land more than twice the size of California, making ranching the largest land use in the West. Billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies support the system, which often harms the environment. As President Donald Trump’s administration pushes a pro-ranching agenda, ProPublica and High Country News investigated how public lands ranching has evolved. We filed more than 100 public record requests and sued the Bureau of Land Management to pry free documents and data; we interviewed everyone from ranchers to conservationists; and we toured ranching operations in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada. The resulting three-part investigation digs into the subsidies baked into ranching , the environmental impacts from livestock and the political clout that protects this status quo . Here are the takeaways from that work. The system has evolved into a subsidy program for ranchers. The public lands grazing system was modernized in the 1930s in response to the rampant use of natural resources that led to the Dust Bowl — the massive dust storms triggered by poor agricultural practices, including overgrazing. Today, the system focuses on subsidizing the continued grazing of these lands. The BLM and Forest Service, the two largest federal land management agencies, oversee most of the system. Combined, the agencies charged ranchers $21 million in grazing fees in 2024. Our analysis found that to be about a 93% discount, on average, compared with the market rate for forage on private land. We also found that, in 2024 alone, the federal government poured at least $2.5 billion into subsidy programs that public lands ranchers can access. Such subsidies include disaster assistance after droughts and floods as well as compensation for livestock lost to predators. Ranching is consolidated in the hands of some of the wealthiest Americans. A small number of wealthy individuals and corporations manage most livestock on public lands. Roughly two-thirds of the grazing on BLM acreage is controlled by just 10% of ranchers, our analysis found. And on Forest Service land, the top 10% of permittees control more than 50% of grazing. Among the largest ranchers are billionaires like Stan Kroenke and Rupert Murdoch, as well as mining companies and public utilities. The financial benefits of holding permits to graze herds on public lands extend beyond cattle sales. Even hobby ranches can qualify for property tax breaks in many areas; ranching business expenses can be deducted from federal taxes; and private property associated with grazing permits is a stable long-term investment. (Representatives of Kroenke did not respond to requests for comment, and Murdoch’s representative declined to comment.) The Trump administration is supercharging the system, including by further increasing subsidies. The administration released a “plan to fortify the American Beef Industry” in October that instructed the BLM and Forest Service to amend grazing regulations for the first time since the 1990s. The plan suggested that taxpayers further support ranching by increasing subsidies for drought and wildfire relief, livestock killed by predators and government-backed insurance. The White House referred questions to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which said in a statement, “Livestock grazing is not only a federally and statutorily recognized appropriate land use, but a proven land management tool, one that reduces invasive species and wildfire risk, enhances ecosystem health, and supports rural stewardship.” Roughly 18,000 permittees graze livestock on BLM or Forest Service land, most of them small operations. These ranchers say they need government support and cheaper grazing fees to avoid insolvency. The administration is loosening already lax oversight. Ranchers must renew their permits to use public lands every 10 years, including undergoing an environmental review. But Congress passed a law in 2014 that allows permits to be automatically renewed if federal agencies are unable to complete such reviews. In 2013, the BLM approved grazing on 47% of its land open to livestock without an environmental review, our analysis of agency data showed. (The status of about an additional 10% of BLM land was unclear that year.) A decade later, the BLM authorized grazing on roughly 75% of its acreage without review. This is in large part because the BLM’s rangeland management staff is shrinking. The number of these employees dropped 39% between 2020 and 2024, according to Office of Personnel Management data, and roughly 1 in 10 rangeland staff left the agency between Trump’s election win and last June, according to BLM records. The system allows widespread environmental harm in the West. The BLM oversees 155 million acres of public lands open to grazing, and assessments it conducts on the health of the environment found that grazing had degraded at least 38 million acres, an area about half the size of New Mexico . The agency has no record of land health assessments for an additional 35 million acres. ProPublica and High Country News observed overgrazing in multiple states, including streambeds trampled by cattle, grasslands denuded by grazing and creeks fouled by cow corpses. Ranchers contend that public lands grazing has ecological benefits, such as preventing nearby private lands from being sold off and paved over. Bill Fales and his family, for example, run cattle in western Colorado and have done so for more than a century. “The wildlife here is dependent on these ranches staying as open ranch land,” he said. While development destroyed habitat nearby, Fales said, the areas his cattle graze are increasingly shared by animals such as elk, bears and mountain lions. Regulators say that it’s difficult to significantly change the system because of the industry’s political influence. We interviewed 10 current and former BLM employees, from upper management to rank-and-file rangeland managers, and they all spoke of political pressure to go easy on ranchers . “If we do anything anti-grazing, there’s at least a decent chance of politicians being involved,” one BLM employee told us. “We want to avoid that, so we don’t do anything that would bring that about.” A BLM spokesperson said in a statement that “any policy decisions are made in accordance with federal law and are designed to balance economic opportunity with conservation responsibilities across the nation’s public lands.” The industry has friends in high places. The Trump administration appointed to a high-level post at the U.S. Department of the Interior a lawyer who has represented ranchers in cases against the government and owns a stake in a Wyoming cattle operation. The administration also named a tech entrepreneur who owns a ranch in Idaho to a post overseeing the Forest Service. Moreover, politicians from both parties are quick to act if they believe ranchers face onerous oversight. Since 2020, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have written to the BLM and Forest Service about grazing issues more than 20 times, according to logs of agency communications we obtained via public records requests. Read our full investigation of the federal public lands grazing system. The post The Biggest Takeaways From Our Investigation Into Grazing on Public Lands appeared first on ProPublica .

Linda McMahon, the nation’s secretary of education, says public schools are failing.  In November, she promised a “hard reset” of the system in which more than 80% of U.S. children learn. But rather than invest in public education, she has been working to dismantle the Department of Education and enact wholesale changes to how public schools operate. “Our final mission as a department is to fully empower states to carry the torch of our educational renaissance,” she said at a November press conference.  To help her carry out these and other goals, McMahon has brought at least 20 advisers from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups who share her skepticism of the value of public education and seek deep changes, including instilling Christian values into public schools. ProPublica reporters Jennifer Smith Richards and Megan O’Matz spent months reporting and reviewing dozens of hours of video to understand the ideals and ambitions of those pulling the levers of power in federal education policy. They found a concerted push to shrink public school systems by steering taxpayer dollars to private, religious and charter schools, as well as options like homeschooling. The Education Department did not respond to a detailed list of questions from ProPublica.  They also found top officials expressing a vision for the remaining public schools that rejects the separation of church and state and promotes a pro-America vision of history, an “ uplifting portrayal of the nation’s founding ideals .” Critics argue the “patriotic” curricula downplay the legacy of slavery and paper over episodes of discrimination.  Since its establishment in 1979, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has served as an enforcer of anti-discrimination laws in schools and colleges around the country. It’s the place parents turn to when they believe their schools failed to protect children from discrimination or to provide access to an equal education under the law.  The Trump administration laid off much of the office’s staff in its first months and prioritized investigations into schools that allegedly discriminated against white and Jewish students and accommodated transgender students. McMahon and the department have framed this as a course correction in line with efforts to be more efficient and curb diversity, equity and inclusion policies from prior administrations. It has left little recourse for those seeking to defend the rights of students with disabilities, students of color and those facing sex discrimination.  In this video, Smith Richards and O’Matz explain how McMahon and her advisers are reenvisioning the nation’s educational system and what that could mean for the future.  Watch the video here. The post Vouchers, Patriotism and Prayer: The Trump Administration’s Plan to Remake Public Education appeared first on ProPublica .

In late 2024, Nimrod Shimrony, an emergency medical technician for the New York City Fire Department, tried to end his life. After completing an intensive outpatient treatment program, he and his wife searched for a therapist for months.  Valeria Calderón, a special education teacher with New York City’s public school system, suffered a miscarriage that same year. Before she tried to have a baby again, she sought help with the depression and anxiety she had been struggling with. She called more than a dozen therapists. The therapists Shimrony and Calderón contacted were listed in their insurance plan’s provider directory, meaning they were supposedly in-network and the fees associated with visiting them would be lower. Given the number of names listed, there should have been lots of options. But Shimrony and Calderón couldn’t find any in-network provider who would see them. “It blows my mind that I couldn’t find a therapist” through the directory, Shimrony said. “It was impossible.” “I was hanging on by a thread,” said Calderón, who eventually paid more for an out-of-network provider. “There’s only so much you can vent to your family about and only so much support that they can do.” Shimrony and Calderón are among the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last week against EmblemHealth , which offers the most popular health plan for New York City employees. The city employees allege that extensive errors in EmblemHealth’s directory left them with a “deceptive” and “misleading” impression about the size of the insurer’s provider network. The employees were forced to delay care, forgo treatment or seek help from costlier out-of-network providers, said the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status. Valeria Calderón, a special education teacher in New York City’s school system, struggled to find an in-network mental health provider. Sarah Blesener for ProPublica Health insurers rarely face consequences for errors in their provider directories that make it difficult for many consumers to find in-network mental health care. ProPublica’s 2024 series, “ America’s Mental Barrier ,” examined the harms that patients face from so-called ghost networks. The series, which is cited in the lawsuit, also detailed the many ways that insurers have prompted mental health providers to quit accepting insurance .  Many insurers overseeing ghost networks have faced only small and sporadic fines from regulators , and patients often have limited legal recourse against them because of restrictions on the damages that typically can be recouped under federal law. But there are health plans, such as ones local governments offer to employees or that some individuals buy through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, that aren’t covered by the federal law that restricts damages. Damages levied against those plans in lawsuits can be more substantial. That’s the basis for the current suit. “We hope this case can use state consumer protection laws to better advocate for plan members,” said Sara Haviva Mark, an attorney representing the city employees.  ProPublica sent EmblemHealth a list of questions about the lawsuit. Shimrony and Calderón also signed documents waiving their rights to privacy so the insurer could answer questions. “We don’t comment on pending litigation,” a spokesperson for EmblemHealth wrote in an email. Attorneys have filed lawsuits similar to the New York one in at least two other states against insurers such as Kaiser Permanente and Molina . Last spring, the mother of an Arizona man who died after being unable to find mental health treatment sued his plan, which was overseen by Centene, saying it broke the law by publishing false information that misled its customers . (ProPublica had chronicled the man’s struggles to find mental health care .) Those lawsuits are still ongoing and the insurers in those cases have disputed the allegations. This past fall, health insurers overseen by Centene agreed to a $40 million settlement over a similar lawsuit that had been filed by San Diego’s city attorney. A spokesperson for Centene did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. The New York lawsuit was also filed on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association, which alleged that some of its 39,000 members had been listed in EmblemHealth’s directory without their consent. It also claimed that those listings “artificially inflate[d] its provider network at psychiatrists’ expense.” The lawsuit claims that the directory contained many duplicate listings, with one psychiatrist listed 29 times. The directory errors increased the chances that its psychiatrists’ reputations could be damaged, the lawsuit said. That’s because customers reaching out for appointments couldn’t actually get care — and could post negative reviews. “What we do is based on trust,” said Dr. Robert Trestman, a leading ghost networks expert for the association. “So when our name appears in a listing that says you can get care, and then they call us, and we say, ‘Sorry, not taking new patients,’ it has a really negative impact.” Calderón at her apartment in Queens. After suffering a miscarriage in early 2024, “I was hanging on by a thread,” she said. Sarah Blesener for ProPublica The insurance industry’s top trade group, AHIP, has told lawmakers that its members take steps to keep their directories accurate. AHIP claims errors could be fixed faster if providers better updated listings after they move or retire. Mental health experts have disputed that point: They say that insurers don’t always remove listings even after providers formally drop out of a network. EmblemHealth covers more than 3 million people in New York and in neighboring states. New York city employees have been offered numerous options for health plans as part of their employment. But in recent years, roughly 3 out of every 5 city employees chose an EmblemHealth plan in which the premium was fully covered by the city. That plan was replaced by another one from EmblemHealth and UnitedHealthcare at the beginning of 2026. The employees had expected to pay $15 or less to see an in-network mental health provider under the old plan, according to the lawsuit. All they had to do was find one in the company’s directory.  But, according to the lawsuit, some employees using the directory were unable to find an in-network provider willing to take their insurance. Some providers in the directory had long waitlists and many had incorrect contact information, which the insurer is supposed to check. Others no longer accepted EmblemHealth, and a few never had accepted it.  The plaintiffs’ claims follow a series of practices by EmblemHealth — and the companies that merged over the years to form it — that have come under scrutiny from state officials. In 2010, the New York state attorney general’s office found that Group Health Inc., one of the insurers that merged into EmblemHealth, had “ failed to maintain an accurate ” directory. As part of a settlement, Group Health Inc. was supposed to confirm each year that the listed providers were still in the network and to correct inaccurate listings.  In 2014, the attorney general’s office reached a separate settlement with EmblemHealth after it found that the insurer “ improperly denied ” coverage of treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. EmblemHealth agreed to change some of its practices to reduce barriers to getting those treatments. At the time of the settlement, an EmblemHealth spokesperson said in a statement that the insurer was working to “improve the management of behavioral services.” And in 2023, the attorney general’s office published a report that found that EmblemHealth and another dozen insurers had failed to keep their listings of mental health providers free of extensive errors. The office’s staff had contacted a sample of doctors — nearly 400 providers listed in the 13 insurers’ directories — and the vast majority of them were “unreachable, not in-network, or not accepting new patients,” the report said. In EmblemHealth’s directory, the report found, 82% of the providers that were called were not available for an appointment.  The report called on health plans to conduct routine checks of its directories to ensure the listings were accurate. It also recommended that the state’s insurance regulator “vigorously enforce the law” and fine insurers over violations. When ProPublica previously reached out to New York’s insurance regulator , a spokesperson couldn’t point to a single fine related to a ghost network. Last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a new regulation to “ eliminate so-called ‘ghost networks. ’” But the state’s insurance regulator, which publishes enforcement actions on its website, hasn’t posted any notice of fines against EmblemHealth or other health insurers for inaccurate provider directories since then.  ProPublica asked the state’s insurance regulator if there had been any fines against health insurers for inaccurate provider directories since the 2024 story. The regulator did not answer our questions. The post They Couldn’t Access Mental Health Care When They Needed It. Now They’re Suing Their Insurer. appeared first on ProPublica .

This story works best on ProPublica’s website . Delta Airlines Flight 573 took off from San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 4:45 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 16, 2025, and headed for Atlanta. At 5:49 p.m., air traffic controllers told pilots over the Caribbean that a SpaceX Starship rocket had exploded. All planes were ordered to avoid an area where the Federal Aviation Administration estimated debris would fall. The plane turned sharply south to get out of the debris zone. And it wasn’t alone. ProPublica identified 20 other planes that appeared to make sudden turns to exit or avoid the danger zone in the minutes after the explosion. While none of the planes were damaged by the debris, such emergency maneuvering can be risky. The airspace remained closed for 86 minutes, during which time flight patterns show dozens of other planes likely had to change course — making pilots and passengers unwitting participants in SpaceX’s test of the most powerful rocket ever built. When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk chose a remote Texas outpost on the Gulf Coast to develop his company’s ambitious Starship, he put the 400-foot rocket on a collision course with the commercial airline industry. Each time SpaceX did a test run of Starship and its booster, dubbed Super Heavy, the megarocket’s flight path would take it soaring over busy Caribbean airspace before it reached the relative safety of the open Atlantic Ocean. The company planned as many as five such launches a year as it perfected the craft, a version of which is supposed to one day land on the moon. The FAA, which also oversees commercial space launches, predicted the impact to the national airspace would be “minor or minimal,” akin to a weather event, the agency’s 2022 approval shows. No airport would need to close and no airplane would be denied access for “an extended period of time.”  But the reality has been far different. Last year, three of Starship’s five launches exploded at unexpected points on their flight paths, twice raining flaming debris over congested commercial airways and disrupting flights. And while no aircraft collided with rocket parts, pilots were forced to scramble for safety.  A ProPublica investigation, based on agency documents, interviews with pilots and passengers, air traffic control recordings and photos and videos of the events, found that by authorizing SpaceX to test its experimental rocket over busy airspace, the FAA accepted the inherent risk that the rocket might put airplane passengers in danger.  And once the rocket failed spectacularly and that risk became real, neither the FAA nor Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sought to revoke or suspend Starship’s license to launch, a move that is permitted when “necessary to protect the public health and safety.” Instead, the FAA allowed SpaceX to test even more prototypes over the same airspace, adding stress to the already-taxed air traffic control system each time it launched. The first two Starship explosions last year forced the FAA to make real-time calls on where to clear airspace and for how long. Such emergency closures came with little or no warning, ProPublica found, forcing pilots to suddenly upend their flight plans and change course in heavily trafficked airspace to get out of the way of falling debris. In one case, a plane with 283 people aboard ran low on fuel, prompting its pilot to declare an emergency and cross a designated debris zone to reach an airport. The world’s largest pilots union told the FAA in October that such events call into question whether “a suitable process” is in place to respond to unexpected rocket mishaps.  “There is high potential for debris striking an aircraft resulting in devastating loss of the aircraft, flight crew, and passengers,” wrote Steve Jangelis, a pilot and aviation safety chair. The FAA said in response to questions that it “limits the number of aircraft exposed to the hazards, making the likelihood of a catastrophic event extremely improbable.”  Yet for the public and the press, gauging that danger has been difficult. In fact, nearly a year after last January’s explosion, it remains unclear just how close Starship’s wreckage came to airplanes. SpaceX estimated where debris fell after each incident and reported that information to the federal government. But the company didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for that data, and the federal agencies that have seen it, including the FAA, haven’t released it. The agency told us that it was unaware of any other publicly available data on Starship debris. In public remarks, Musk downplayed the risk posed by Starship. To caption a video of flaming debris in January, he wrote, “ Entertainment is guaranteed! ” and, after the March explosion, he posted, “ Rockets are hard .” The company has been more measured, saying it learns from mistakes, which “help us improve Starship’s reliability.”  For airplanes traveling at high speeds, there is little margin for error. Research shows as little as 300 grams of debris — or two-thirds of a pound — “could catastrophically destroy an aircraft,” said Aaron Boley, a professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the danger space objects pose to airplanes. Photographs of Starship pieces that washed up on beaches show items much bigger than that, including large, intact tanks . Debris washed up on a beach in Mexico following a SpaceX explosion. Courtesy of Jesus Elias Ibarra Rodriguez “It doesn’t actually take that much material to cause a major problem to an aircraft,” Boley said. In response to growing alarm over the rocket’s repeated failures, the FAA has expanded prelaunch airspace closures and offered pilots more warning of potential trouble spots. The agency said it also required SpaceX to conduct investigations into the incidents and to “implement numerous corrective actions to enhance public safety.” An FAA spokesperson referred ProPublica’s questions about what those corrective actions were to SpaceX, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Experts say the FAA’s shifting approach telegraphs a disquieting truth about air safety as private companies increasingly push to use the skies as their laboratories: Regulators are learning as they go.  During last year’s Starship launches, the FAA was under pressure to fulfill a dual mandate: to regulate and promote the commercial space industry while keeping the flying public safe, ProPublica found. In his October letter, Jangelis called the arrangement “a direct conflict of interest.”  In an interview, Kelvin Coleman, who was head of FAA’s commercial space office during the launches, said his office determined that the risk from the mishaps “was within the acceptable limits of our regulations.”  But, he said, “as more launches are starting to take place, I think we have to take a real hard look at the tools that we have in place and how do we better integrate space launch into the airspace.” “We Need to Protect the Airspace”  On Jan. 16, 2025, as SpaceX prepared to launch Starship 7 from Boca Chica, Texas, the government had to address the possibility the giant rocket would break up unexpectedly.  Using debris modeling and simulations, the U.S. Space Force, the branch of the military that deals with the nation’s space interests, helped the FAA draw the contours of theoretical “debris response areas” — no-fly zones that could be activated if Starship exploded. With those plans in place, Starship Flight 7 lifted off at 5:37 p.m. EST. About seven minutes later, it achieved a notable feat: Its reusable booster rocket separated, flipped and returned to Earth, where giant mechanical arms caught it as SpaceX employees cheered. But about 90 seconds later, as Starship’s upper stage continued to climb, SpaceX lost contact with it. The craft caught fire and exploded, far above Earth’s surface.  A pilot on a flight from Miami to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, recorded video of space debris visible from the cockpit while flying at 37,000 feet. Provided to ProPublica Air traffic control’s communications came alive with surprised pilots who saw the accident, some of whom took photos and shot videos of the flaming streaks in the sky: Pilot: I just got a major streak going for at least 60 miles, all these different colors. Just curious but — it looked like it was coming towards us, but obviously because of the distance …. Just letting you know. Controller: Can you, can you give an estimate on how far away it is? Another controller warned a different pilot of debris in the area: Controller: Due to a space vehicle mishap —  a rocket launch that basically exploded between our airspace and Miami — I’m going to give you holding instructions because there was debris in the area, so I’m going to keep you away from it. Two FAA safety inspectors were in Boca Chica to watch the launch at SpaceX’s mission control, said Coleman, who, for Flight 7, was on his laptop in Washington, D.C., receiving updates. As wreckage descended rapidly toward airplanes’ flight paths over the Caribbean, the FAA activated a no-fly zone based on the vehicle’s last known position and prelaunch calculations. Air traffic controllers warned pilots to avoid the area, which stretched hundreds of miles over a ribbon of ocean roughly from the Bahamas to just east of St. Martin, covering portions of populated islands, including all of Turks and Caicos. While the U.S. controls some airspace in the region, it relies on other countries to cooperate when it recommends a closure.  The FAA also cordoned off a triangular zone south of Key West. When a pilot asked when planes would be able to proceed through the area, a controller replied: Controller: The only information I got is that the rocket exploded so we need to protect the airspace, and Miami and Domingo stopped taking aircraft. There were at least 11 planes in the closed airspace when Starship exploded, and flight tracking data shows they hurried to move out of the way, clearing the area within 15 minutes. Such maneuvers aren’t without risk. “If many aircraft need to suddenly change their routing plans,” Boley said, “then it could cause additional stress” on an already taxed air traffic control system, “which can lead to errors.” That wasn’t the end of the disruption though. The FAA kept the debris response area, or DRA, active for another 71 minutes, leaving some flights in a holding pattern over the Caribbean. Several began running low on fuel and some informed air traffic controllers that they needed to land. “We haven’t got enough fuel to wait,” said one pilot for Iberia airlines who was en route from Madrid with 283 people on board. The controller warned him that if he proceeded across the closed airspace, it would be at his own risk: Controller: If you’re going to pass through the DRA, you guys’re going to need to declare an emergency. That’s what my supervisor — if you’re going to land at San Juan, you need to declare an emergency for fuel reasons, that’s what my supervisor just told me. Pilot: In that case, we declare emergency. Mayday mayday mayday. The plane landed safely in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Iberia did not respond to requests for comment, but in statements to ProPublica, other airlines downplayed the launch fallout. Delta, for example, said the incident “had minimal impact to our operation and no aircraft damage.” The company’s “safety management system and our safety culture help us address potential issues to reinforce that air transportation remains the safest form of travel in the world,” a spokesperson said. After the incident, some pilots registered concerns with the FAA, which was also considering a request from SpaceX to increase the number of annual Starship launches from five to 25.  “Last night’s Space X rocket explosion, which caused the diversion of several flights operating over the Gulf of Mexico, was pretty eye opening and scary,” wrote Steve Kriese in comments to the FAA, saying he was a captain for a major airline and often flew over the Gulf. “I do not support the increase of rocket launches by Space X, until a thorough review can be conducted on the disaster that occurred last night, and safety measures can be put in place that keeps the flying public safe.” Kriese could not be reached for comment. The Air Line Pilots Association urged the FAA to suspend Starship testing until the root cause of the failure could be investigated and corrected. A letter from the group, which represents more than 80,000 pilots flying for 43 airlines, said flight crews traveling in the Caribbean didn’t know where planes might be at risk from rocket debris until after the explosion.  “By that time, it’s much too late for crews who are flying in the vicinity of the rocket operation, to be able to make a decision for the safe outcome of the flight,” wrote Jangelis, the pilot and aviation safety chair for the group. The explosion, he said, “raises additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights.” In response, the FAA said it would “review existing processes and determine whether additional measures can be taken to improve situational awareness for flight crews prior to launch.” According to FAA documents, the explosion propelled Starship fragments across an area nearly the size of New Jersey. Debris landed on beaches and roadways in Turks and Caicos. It also damaged a car. No one was injured. Three months later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which was evaluating potential impacts to marine life, sent the FAA a report with a map of where debris from an explosion could fall during future Starship failures. The estimate, which incorporated SpaceX’s own data from the Starship 7 incident, depicted an area more than three times the size of the airspace closed by the FAA.  In a statement, an FAA spokesperson said NOAA’s map was “intended to cover multiple potential operations,” while the FAA’s safety analysis is for a “single actual launch.” A NOAA spokesperson said that the map reflects “the general area where mishaps could occur” and is not directly comparable with the FAA’s no-fly zones.  Nevertheless Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, said the illustration suggested the no-fly zones the FAA activated may not fully capture how far and wide debris spreads after a rocket breakup. The current predictive science, he said, “carries significant uncertainty.”  Debris from the Jan. 16, 2025, Starship rocket explosion left a trail of fire and smoke visible from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Reuters/via Reuters TV At an industry conference a few weeks after the January explosion, Shana Diez, a SpaceX executive, acknowledged the FAA’s challenges in overseeing commercial launches. “The biggest thing that we really would like to work with them on in the future is improving their real time awareness of where the launch vehicles are and where the launch vehicles’ debris could end up,” she said.  “We’re Too Close to the Debris” On Feb. 26 of last year, with the investigation into Starship Flight 7 still open, the FAA cleared Flight 8 to proceed , saying it “determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements.”  The action was allowed under a practice that began during the first Trump administration, known as “expedited return-to-flight,” that permitted commercial space companies to launch again even before the investigation into a prior problematic flight was complete, as long as safety systems were working properly. Coleman, who took a voluntary separation offer last year, said that before granting approval, the FAA confirmed that “safety critical systems,” such as the rocket’s ability to self-destruct if it went off course, worked as designed during Flight 7.  By March 6, SpaceX was ready to launch again. This time the FAA gave pilots a heads-up an hour and 40 minutes before liftoff.  “In the event of a debris-generating space launch vehicle mishap, there is the potential for debris falling within an area,” the advisory said, again listing coordinates for two zones in the Gulf and Caribbean.  The FAA said a prelaunch safety analysis, which includes planning for potential debris, “incorporates lessons learned from previous flights.” The zone described in the agency’s advisory for the Caribbean was wider and longer than the previous one, while the area over the Gulf was significantly expanded. Flight 8 launched at 6:30 p.m. EST and its booster returned to the launchpad as planned. But a little more than eight minutes into the flight, some of Starship’s engines cut out. The craft went into a spin and about 90 seconds later SpaceX lost touch with it and it exploded. SpaceX’s eighth Starship test launched from a launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, on March 6, 2025, before blowing up 90 miles above Earth. Joe Skipper/Reuters The FAA activated the no-fly zones less than two minutes later, using the same coordinates it had released prelaunch.  Even with the advance warning, data shows at least five planes were in the debris zones at the time of the explosion, and they all cleared the airspace in a matter of minutes.  A pilot on one of those planes, Frontier Flight 081, told passengers they could see the rocket explosion out the right-side windows. Dane Siler and Mariah Davenport, who were heading home to the Midwest after vacationing in the Dominican Republic, lifted the window shade and saw debris blazing across the sky, with one spot brighter than the rest. “It literally looked like the sun coming out,” Siler told ProPublica. “It was super bright.” They and other passengers shot videos, marveling at what looked like fireworks, the couple said. The Starship fragments appeared to be higher than the plane, many miles off. But before long, the pilot announced “I’m sorry to report that we have to turn around because we’re too close to the debris,” Siler said. Caption: Cellphone video from passengers aboard Frontier Flight 081 shows debris in the sky about a minute after the FAA alerted the flight crew to exit the debris zone on March 6, 2025. Flight data from OpenSky Network. Video courtesy of Dane Siler and Mariah Davenport. Frontier did not respond to requests for comment. The FAA lifted the restriction on planes flying through the debris zone about 30 minutes after Starship exploded, much sooner than it had in January. The agency said that the Space Force had “notified the FAA that all debris was down approximately 30 minutes after the Starship Flight 8 anomaly.” But in response to ProPublica’s questions, the Space Force acknowledged that it did not track the debris in real time. Instead, it said “computational modeling,” along with other scientific measures, allowed the agency to “predict and mitigate risks effectively.” The FAA said “the aircraft were not at risk” during the aftermath of Flight 8. Experts told ProPublica that the science underlying such modeling is far from settled, and the government’s ability to anticipate how debris will behave after an explosion like Starship’s is limited. “You’re not going to find anybody who’s going to be able to answer that question with any precision,” said John Crassidis, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Buffalo. “At best, you have an educated guess. At worst, it’s just a potshot.”  Where pieces fall — and how long they take to land — depends on many factors, including atmospheric winds and the size, shape and type of material involved, experts said.  During the breakup of Flight 7, the FAA kept airspace closed for roughly 86 minutes. However, Diez, the SpaceX executive, told attendees at the industry conference that, in fact, it had taken “hours” for all the debris to reach the ground. The FAA, SpaceX and Diez did not respond to follow-up questions about her remarks. It’s unclear how accurate the FAA’s debris projections were for the March explosion. The agency acknowledged that debris fell in the Bahamas, but it did not provide ProPublica the exact location, making it impossible to determine whether the wreckage landed where the FAA expected. While some of the country’s islands were within the boundaries of the designated debris zone, most were not. Calls and emails to Bahamas officials were not returned. The FAA said no injuries or serious property damage occurred. FAA Greenlights More Launches By May, after months of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashing spending and firing workers at federal agencies across Washington, the FAA granted SpaceX ’s request to exponentially increase the number of Starship launches from Texas. Starship is key to “delivering greater access to space and enabling cost-effective delivery of cargo and people to the Moon and Mars,” the FAA found. The agency said it will make sure parties involved “are taking steps to ensure the safe, efficient, and equitable use” of national airspace. The U.S. is in a race to beat China to the lunar surface — a priority set by Trump’s first administration and continued under President Joe Biden. Supporters say the moon can be mined for resources like water and rare earth metals, and can offer a place to test new technologies. It could also serve as a stepping stone for more distant destinations, enabling Musk to achieve his longstanding goal of bringing humans to Mars.  Trump pledged last January that the U.S. will “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”  But with experimental launches like Starship’s, Jangelis said, the FAA should be “as conservative as possible” when managing the airspace below them. “We expect the FAA to make sure our aircraft and our passengers stay safe,” he said. “There has to be a balance between the for-profit space business and the for-profit airlines and commerce.” A More Conservative Approach Crowds flocked to South Padre Island, Texas, to watch Starship’s ninth test launch on May 27. Gabriel V. Cardenas/Reuters In mid-May, United Kingdom officials sent a letter to their U.S. counterparts, asking that SpaceX and the FAA change Starship’s flight path or take other precautions because they were worried about the safety of their Caribbean territories. The following day, the FAA announced in a news release that it had approved the next Starship launch, pending either the agency’s closure of the investigation into Flight 8 or granting of a “return to flight” determination. A week later, with the investigation into Flight 8 still open, the agency said SpaceX had “satisfactorily addressed” the causes of the mishap. The FAA did not detail what those causes were at the time but said it would verify that the company implemented all necessary “corrective actions.”  This time the FAA was more aggressive on air safety.  The agency preventively closed an extensive swath of airspace extending 1,600 nautical miles from the launch site, across the Gulf of Mexico and through part of the Caribbean. The FAA said that 175 flights or more could be affected, and it advised Turks and Caicos’ Providenciales International Airport to close during the launch. The FAA Closed a Heavily Trafficked Air Corridor Prior to Flight 9 Flight data from the day before Starship Flight 9’s launch shows just how busy the area around the FAA’s no-fly zone could be around the time of the launch. The FAA Closed a Heavily Trafficked Air Corridor Prior to Flight 9 Flight data from the day before Starship Flight 9’s launch shows just how busy the area around the FAA’s no-fly zone could be around the time of the launch. Note: ProPublica connected gaps in some flight paths to create continuous lines. Source: OpenSky Network The agency said the move was driven in part by an “updated flight safety analysis” and SpaceX’s decision to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster — something the company had never tried before. The agency also said it was “in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom, Turks & Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba.” Coleman told ProPublica that the concerns of the Caribbean countries, along with Starship’s prior failures, helped convince the FAA to close more airspace ahead of Flight 9. On May 27, the craft lifted off at 7:36 p.m. EDT, an hour later than in March and two hours later than in January. The FAA said it required the launch window to be scheduled during “non-peak transit periods.” This mission, too, ended in failure. Starship’s Super Heavy booster blew up over the Gulf of Mexico, where it was supposed to have made what’s called a “hard splashdown.”  In response, the FAA again activated an emergency no-fly zone. Most aircraft had already been rerouted around the closed airspace, but the agency said it diverted one plane and put another in a holding pattern for 24 minutes. The FAA did not provide additional details on the flights. According to the agency, no debris fell outside the hazard area where the FAA had closed airspace. Pieces from the booster eventually washed up on Mexico’s beaches. Starship’s upper stage reached the highest planned point in its flight path, but it went into a spin on the way down, blowing up over the Indian Ocean. The Path Ahead A map released by the FAA shows potential no-fly zones planned for future Starship launches that would cross over a portion of Florida. Air hazard areas — the AHAs on this map — are paths that would be cleared of air traffic before launches. Federal Aviation Administration SpaceX launched Starship again in August and October. Unlike the prior flights, both went off without incident, and the company said it was turning its focus to the next generation of Starship to provide “service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.” But about a week later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he would open up SpaceX’s multibillion-dollar contract for a crewed lunar lander to rival companies. SpaceX is “an amazing company,” he said on CNBC. “The problem is, they’re behind.” Musk pushed back, saying on X that “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.” He insulted Duffy, calling him “ Sean Dummy ” and saying “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.” The Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment or make Duffy available. In a web post on Oct. 30, SpaceX said it was proposing “a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations” that would “result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” SpaceX is now seeking FAA approval to add new trajectories as Starship strives to reach orbit. Under the plan, the rocket would fly over land in Florida and Mexico, as well as the airspace of Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, likely disrupting hundreds of flights.  In its letter, the pilots’ union told the FAA that testing Starship “over a densely populated area should not be allowed (given the dubious failure record)” until the craft becomes more reliable. The planned air closures could prove “crippling” for the Central Florida aviation network, it added. Still, SpaceX is undeterred.  Diez, the company executive, said on X in October, “We are putting in the work to make 2026 an epic year for Starship.” How We Analyzed Data on Planes at Risk We analyzed flight tracking data to determine how many planes flew in or near areas at risk from falling debris during recent SpaceX Starship explosions. The bulk of the flight tracking data we used came from the OpenSky Network , a nonprofit that collects data from a technology called Automatic Dependent Surveillance — Broadcast . These systems communicate a plane’s position to air traffic controllers and other planes. The signals can be tracked by ground sensors. OpenSky and similar services, such as ADS-B Exchange , have crowdsourced a network of sensors that report real-time information, including a plane’s model, flight number, location, heading and altitude. Most paths came from OpenSky’s database. They were formed by connecting individual trace points to create a line. Technical issues, especially gaps between sensors, can create inconsistent flight traces. In cases where there are gaps, the flight path depicts the plane traveling in a straight line between the available points. Missing maneuvers were supplemented with data from ADS-B Exchange, which we also used for fact-checking. We compared the plane’s locations and maneuvers to the FAA’s debris zone, which was based on coordinates it released to air traffic personnel. We identified planes inside the zone during or just after the explosion in January, as well as others that appeared to take significant action to avoid the area. Planes that had just crossed the zone or flew in parallel to it were not included. This analysis may not be comprehensive of all evasive maneuvers or disruptions caused by the explosions. We also analyzed historical data for the same day of the week (Thursday) and time period when the January debris zone was active to determine the number of planes that typically pass through the area. The post “We’re Too Close to the Debris” appeared first on ProPublica .

Paul Windle for “ Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to ‘Munch’ Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health .” Art direction by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photography by Sarahbeth Maney for “ Nike Says Its Factory Workers Earn Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. At This Cambodian Factory, 1% Made That Much. ” Photo editing by Peter DiCampo. Photography by Sarahbeth Maney for “ We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. ” Photo editing by Cengiz Yar. Design and development by Anna Donlan for “ Sick in a Hospital Town .” Visual editing by Alex Bandoni. Videos by Katie Campbell and Almudena Toral. Additional video editing by Gerardo del Valle. Graphics by Lucas Waldron. Illustration for “ How a Global Online Network of White Supremacists Groomed a Teen to Kill .” Art direction by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photography by Annie Flanagan for “ This Storm-Battered Town Voted for Trump. He Has Vowed to Overturn the Law That Could Fix Its Homes. ” Photo editing by Andrea Wise. Illustration by Jacqueline Tam for “ Portland Said It Was Investing in Homeless People’s Safety. Deaths Have Quadrupled. ” Art direction by Peter DiCampo. Illustration by Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants for “ Look Up Where Your Generic Prescription Drugs Were Made .” Art direction by Lisa Larson-Walker. Development by Brandon Roberts, Ruth Talbot and Nick McMillan. Additional design and development by Jeff Frankl. Additional development by Pratheek Rebala, Andrea Suozzo, Al Shaw and Alec Glassford. Photography by Maddie McGarvey for “ What the U.S. Government Is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic .” Graphics by Chris Alcantara. Video illustration for “ Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More .” Art direction by Alex Bandoni and Lisa Larson-Walker. Illustration and art direction by Shoshana Gordon for “ ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. It’s a New Record. ” Direction, production and editing by Gerardo del Valle for “ ‘An American Nightmare’: Three Men Deported to CECOT and Their Families Reflect on Their Monthslong Ordeal .” Cinematography by Alejandro Bonilla Suárez and Edwin Corona Ramos. Photography by Adriana Loureiro Fernández for “ What I Witnessed as I Photographed the Disappearances and the Homecomings of My Countrymen .” Photo editing by Cengiz Yar. Direction, production, filming and editing by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons for “ Status: Venezuelan .” Photography by Roberto “Bear” Guerra for “ Wealthy Ranchers Profit from Public Lands. And Taxpayers Pick up the Tab. ” Visual editing by Cengiz Yar. Design by Allen Tan. Illustrations by Shoshana Gordon. Graphics by Lucas Waldron. 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Direction and production by Nadia Sussman for “ Before a Breath .” Produced and filmed by Liz Moughon and edited by Margaret Cheatham Williams. Illustration by Nicole Rifkin for “ Anchorage Police Say They Witnessed a Sexual Assault in Public. It Took Seven Years for the Case to Go to Trial. ” Art direction by Peter DiCampo. Direction, production, filming and editing by Nadia Sussman for “ This Family Will Return Home After Helene. Their Onerous Journey to Rebuild Shows Why Many Others Won’t. ” Cinematography by Dillon Deaton. Photography by Greg Kahn for “ Citing Trump Order on ‘Biological Truth,’ VA Makes It Harder for Male Veterans With Breast Cancer to Get Coverage. ” Photo editing by Andrea Wise. Illustrations and art direction by Shoshana Gordon for “ How Paul Newby Made North Carolina a Blueprint for Conservative Courts .” Animation and editing by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons for “ Who Is Russell Vought? How a Little-Known D.C. Insider Became Trump’s Dismantler-in-Chief. ” Video produced by Lisa Riordan Seville, Katie Campbell and Andy Kroll. Cinematography and additional editing by Katie Campbell. Illustration by Ricardo Tomás for “ The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE .” Art direction by Alex Bandoni. Illustrations by Justin Metz for “ Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ” Design and development by Ruth Talbot. Anna Donlan contributed design. Art direction by Andrea Wise. Photography by Stephanie Mei-Ling for ProPublica. Photography by Juan Diego Reyes for “ Helene’s Unheard Warnings .” Graphics and development by Lucas Waldron. Design by Anna Donlan. Visual editing by Shoshana Gordon and Anna Donlan. Photography for “ DOGE Targeted Him on Social Media. Then the Taliban Took His Family. ” Design and development by Allen Tan. Visual editing by Alex Bandoni and Cengiz Yar. Graphics by Chris Alcantara for “ Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. ” Photography by Peter DiCampo, left, for “ Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. ” and Brian Otieno, right, for “ The Summer of Starvation: Amid Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts, a Mother Struggles to Keep Her Sons Alive .” Photo editing by Peter DiCampo. Visual Storytelling Department Boyzell Hosey, senior editor, visual storytelling Visuals Lisa Larson-Walker, art director Andrea Wise, visual strategy editor Alex Bandoni, visuals editor Peter DiCampo, visuals editor Cengiz Yar, visuals editor Shoshana Gordon, visuals editor Sarahbeth Maney, visual fellow Graphics Lena V. Groeger, graphics director Anna Donlan, interactive story designer Zisiga Mukulu, interactive story designer Lucas Waldron, graphics editor Chris Alcantara, graphics editor Video Almudena Toral, executive producer Lisa Riordan Seville, senior producer Katie Campbell, video journalist and filmmaker Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, video journalist and filmmaker Nadia Sussman, video journalist and filmmaker Margaret Cheatham Williams, video and film editor Gerardo del Valle, video journalist and filmmaker  Liz Moughon, video and film fellow Product Ben Werdmuller, senior director of technology Allen Tan, director of design Alanna McLafferty, senior product engineer Artemis Sparks, principal engineer, devops Dan Phiffer, senior engineer Jeff Frankl, editorial experience designer Jesse Browning, data integrations engineer Katie Antonsson, audience data and insights analyst Melody Kramer, product manager Sarah Glen, product manager Aaron Brezel, AI engineering fellow Dana Chiueh, AI engineering fellow News Apps Ken Schwencke, senior editor, data and news apps Kevin Uhrmacher, deputy news apps editor Al Shaw, senior news apps developer Alec Glassford, senior engineer, news apps and product Sergio Hernandez, news apps developer Nat Lash, news apps developer Andrea Suozzo, news apps developer Ruth Talbot, news apps developer Brandon Roberts, news apps developer The post Our Year in Visual Journalism appeared first on ProPublica .

Despite a slew of reforms enacted last year to rein in the practices of towing companies, more needs to be done to protect consumers whose cars face removal and possible sale, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles said Tuesday. DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera laid out five recommendations he plans to make for the legislature to consider during its session that begins in February. The recommendations follow a Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica investigation that exposed how state law for decades favored towing companies at the expense of low-income consumers. They also follow months of meetings with a group of industry and consumer representatives. The recommendations would require towing companies to make more effort to notify owners that their cars have been towed and streamline the process by which the firms can sell unclaimed vehicles. The commissioner announced his proposal at the last scheduled meeting of a working group of towing and consumer representatives. The group was created as part of a towing reform law passed last year after the news organizations showed how towing companies were seeking the DMV’s permission to sell some cars after as little as 15 days, one of the shortest time frames in the country. Many low-income residents were towed for minor violations, sometimes from their own apartment complexes, only to lose their cars when they couldn’t afford to get them back before they were sold. If the legislature adopts the recommendations, towing companies would no longer place values on vehicles that they tow, which now determines whether a tower can start the sales process in 15 days or 45 days. Instead, all cars would be sold at a public auction after 30 days, Guerrera said. Other recommendations include requiring towing companies to send two letters to the registered owner of the vehicle after it’s towed, one certified and one not. If the car isn’t claimed, towers would have to send a third letter to the owner after 30 days to inform them when and where the auction will be held. The towing companies would be required to either advertise the auction on their websites or publish legal advertisements in local newspapers. The DMV would also be required to set up a portal on its website listing every towed car so that people can find out which tower has their vehicle, when it was towed and when the auction will be. If a vehicle receives no bids and the car owner shows up, the towing company would be required to offer the car back to them at whatever their costs are before selling it for scrap. There was little pushback from industry leaders or consumer advocates on Tuesday even though towing representatives had previously complained that the changes would add costs and consumer lawyers had objected that the recommendations didn’t go far enough to protect drivers. The proposal also didn’t address the initial task the legislature assigned to the group: how to handle the profits from the sales of towed cars. Currently, towing companies are supposed to hold onto proceeds for a year so owners or lenders can claim them. After that, any unclaimed funds, minus towing fees, are required to be turned over to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found that hasn’t happened in part because the DMV never set up a system to collect the money . Guerrera said after the meeting that the DMV has set up a process to monitor whether towing companies are turning funds over to the state. He said they won’t know if the system is working until October because the money from sales of towed cars must be held for a year. After Guerrera finished outlining his proposal, Eileen Colonese, secretary of the industry group Towing & Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said Guerrera’s plan doesn’t address a key issue: The last registered owner of the vehicle is not necessarily the owner when it’s towed. “I still believe that until the state of Connecticut comes up with a process to figure out who really owns the vehicles, all of this stuff that we’re doing is pretty much nonsensical because we’re still not notifying the current owner of the vehicle,” Colonese said. Consumer advocate and attorney Raphael Podolsky said Guerrera’s recommendations are a “step in the right direction, but there’s still a lot of issues that need to be addressed until the system is fixed.” Guerrera said his plan was “inspired” by the discussions during the previous four committee meetings. He said he hopes the portal on the state’s website will also help DMV personnel better track what towing companies are doing with vehicles. Under the revised law, which went into effect on Oct. 1, towing companies must now give people warning before removing vehicles from apartment parking lots unless there’s a safety issue. They also must accept credit cards, let people retrieve their belongings and be available on weekends for people to pick up their cars. And although the sales process can begin after 15 days for vehicles worth less than $1,500, towers must wait 30 days before selling them. Guerrera said he expects that the working group will keep meeting. “I want to have continuous meetings, whether it’s quarterly or twice a quarter, to try and narrow down any issues that come up or that need to be fixed so that we can create a system that works for everybody,” Guerrera said. The post “Step in the Right Direction”: Connecticut DMV Commissioner Calls for More Reforms to State Towing Law to Protect Drivers appeared first on ProPublica .

Ethylene oxide was once considered an unremarkable pollutant. The colorless gas seeped from relatively few industrial facilities and commanded little public attention.  All that changed in 2016, when the Environmental Protection Agency completed a study that found the chemical is 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought. The agency then spent years updating regulations that protect millions of people who are most exposed to the compound. In 2024, the EPA approved stricter rules that require commercial sterilizers for medical equipment and large chemical plants to slash emissions of ethylene oxide, which causes lymphoma and breast cancer. It was doing what the EPA has done countless times: revising rules based on new scientific knowledge. Now, its ability to do that for many air pollutants is under threat.  In government records that have flown under the radar, President Donald Trump’s EPA said it is reconsidering whether the agency had the legal authority to update those rules.  Chemical companies and their trade organizations have argued that the EPA cannot reevaluate hazardous air pollution rules to account for newly discovered harms if it has revised them once already. It doesn’t matter if decades have passed or new information has emerged.  If the EPA agrees, environmentalists fear that the decision could have wide implications, significantly curbing the EPA’s ability to limit nearly 200 pollutants from thousands of industrial plants. The next time new science reveals that a chemical is much more toxic, or that the amount of pollution released from a factory had been underestimated and would cause legally unacceptable health risks, the agency would not be able to react. “It’s a poor reflection on this administration’s claim that they are actually interested in clean air,” said Ana Baptista, a professor of environmental policy and sustainability management at The New School. “By saying we’re no longer going to consider science, it’s abdicating your mission.” The EPA didn’t address ProPublica’s questions about the ethylene oxide reevaluation or its broader implications. Instead, the agency pointed to a March press release about how it was reconsidering multiple air pollution rules issued by President Joe Biden’s administration, including the ones for chemical plants and commercial sterilizers. “EPA is committed to using the gold standard of science during these reviews,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Since day one, EPA has been clear that providing clean air, water, and land for all Americans is a top priority.”  The EPA’s reconsideration focuses on the Clean Air Act, the country’s most powerful air quality law, which regulates hazardous air pollutants for different types of industrial operations. There’s a specific rule for oil refineries, for instance, and another for steel mills. Within eight years after each rule is published, the EPA is required to conduct an assessment, called a residual risk review, to decide if an update is necessary.  These assessments use detailed data on the quantity of emissions coming from each facility, the toxicity of each chemical and other information on how the chemicals are released and dispersed in the air. The combined data reveals how the emissions put local residents at risk of cancer, respiratory diseases, reproductive harm and other health problems.  If the EPA determines the overall risks exceed what’s allowed under the law, the agency must tighten the rules. The Clean Air Act doesn’t say whether the EPA is required to conduct additional residual risk reviews after the first one. Nor does it specifically prohibit the agency from doing so. As far back as 2006, the EPA under President George W. Bush asserted that the agency had the right to revisit and revise the rules based on risk.  The issue became newly relevant in 2021, when the EPA’s Office of Inspector General cited the new conclusions about the toxicity of ethylene oxide. The office estimated that nearly half a million Americans were exposed to unacceptable cancer risks from industrial emissions by chemical plants, commercial sterilizers and other facilities pumping out ethylene oxide. In its report, the inspector general’s office advised the agency to “exercise its discretionary authority to conduct new residual risk reviews” as needed when “new data or information indicates an air pollutant is more toxic than previously determined.” (The inspector general was a Trump appointee.) The EPA had already conducted the first, mandatory risk reviews for large chemical plants and commercial sterilizers in the early 2000s. In response to the inspector general report, the agency launched additional reviews using the updated science on ethylene oxide. Ultimately, the EPA determined the health risks were unacceptable and revised the rules to lower them. The agency asserted that the Clean Air Act “does not limit our discretion or authority to conduct another risk review should we consider that such review is warranted.”  According to the EPA’s estimates, the new regulations for chemical plants under the 2024 revised rule would cut the number of nearby residents who are exposed to unacceptable cancer risks from 90,000 to 3,000.  But the chemical industry opposed the stricter rules. Industry representatives disagreed with the EPA’s new assessment of ethylene oxide, contending that it overestimated the risk the chemical posed, and argued the agency didn’t have the authority to conduct those risk reviews. In a 2023 letter, the American Chemistry Council said “the Agency has erred in conducting a new risk review,” as “the plain text” of the Clean Air Act “indicates that EPA actually lacks this authority.” Similarly, the Louisiana Chemical Association submitted public comments on the chemical plant rule stating the “EPA has no statutory authority to conduct a second risk review” and that doing so was “arbitrary and capricious.” David Cresson, president and CEO of the association, told ProPublica that the trade group supports “protecting the public’s health through regulatory frameworks that are lawful, while remaining based in sound science.”  Brendan Bradley, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, said the organization had no further comment on the issue. After Trump was inaugurated, one of his appointees to the EPA let the industry know the agency was conducting a “reconsideration” of the two rules focused on ethylene oxide emissions. Last spring, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator Abigale Tardif, a former oil and gas lobbyist, hinted at how the EPA might challenge those rules. In letters addressed to trade groups representing commercial sterilizers and chemical plants , Tardif said the agency was reconsidering multiple issues related to the rules, including the “EPA’s authority and decision to undertake a second residual risk review” under the Clean Air Act, as well as “the analysis and determinations made in that review, and the resulting risk standards.” Tardif didn’t respond to requests for comment.  The agency also filed a regulatory notice about its plans to revise the 2024 chemical plant rule. Citing the part of the Clean Air Act that deals with the updated rule assessments, the notice said the EPA had “identified items for reconsideration around its CAA section 112(f)(2) residual risk review authority.”  While the stricter ethylene oxide rules are technically still in effect, the Trump administration has exempted dozens of large chemical plants and sterilizer facilities from following them as the agency works through a formal process that is widely expected to result in watered-down standards. If the Trump EPA does decide it lacks the legal authority to conduct multiple risk reviews, the agency might still have the authority to strengthen hazardous air pollution rules by using a separate part of the Clean Air Act, said Abel Russ, a senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group. That section of the act allows the EPA to update a rule if agency scientists conclude that better pollution-control technology is affordable and available. But limiting the agency’s ability to conduct residual risk reviews would be a serious blow to the act, Russ said, “kneecapping” the agency’s authority over these toxic pollutants.  Environmental groups will almost certainly sue if the EPA concludes it does not have the legal authority to revise hazardous air pollution rules more than once based on risk. Russ called industry’s comments absurd and said they don’t account for the reality that our knowledge of industrial pollution is changing all the time.  As ProPublica reported in October, the agency recently received clear evidence that many industrial facilities are leaking far more pollution than the companies that own them previously reported. In 2023, researchers who conducted their own air monitoring in the industrial corridor of Louisiana known as Cancer Alley found much higher concentrations of ethylene oxide than expected . For more than half the areas they sampled, the local cancer risk from ethylene oxide would be unacceptable if residents were exposed to these concentrations over a lifetime. If the EPA decides it lacks the legal authority to conduct multiple risk reviews, it would find itself in the position of not being able to take action even if the agency confirmed similar results. “The whole premise of risk assessment is that it’s based on the best available science,” said Kimberly Terrell, a research scientist at the Environmental Integrity Project. As our knowledge grows, researchers tend to find that chemicals are linked to additional health effects, she added, so blocking these updates “pretty much ensures” the EPA is underestimating the risks. The post Trump’s EPA Could Limit Its Own Ability to Use New Science to Strengthen Air Pollution Rules appeared first on ProPublica .

Kaitlin spent the first weeks of her newborn son’s life in a panic. The hospital where she gave birth in October 2022 had administered a routine drug test, and a nurse informed her the lab had confirmed the presence of opiates. Child welfare authorities opened an investigation. Months later, after searching her home and interviewing her older child and ex-husband, the agency dropped its investigation, having found no evidence of abuse or neglect, or of drug use. The amount of opiates that upended Kaitlin’s life — 18.4 nanograms of codeine per milliliter of urine, according to court documents — was so minuscule that if she were an Air Force pilot, she could have had 200 times more in her system and still have been cleared to fly. But for Kaitlin, the test triggered an investigation with potentially life-altering consequences. (ProPublica is using Kaitlin’s first name because her full name has been redacted from court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.)  The ordeal “tempered what was otherwise supposed to be a joyous occasion” for the family, according to a lawsuit filed in 2024 by New Jersey’s attorney general against the hospital system, Virtua Health. The hospital said in a statement that it has “a relentless commitment to evidence-based, equitable care for every family.” In court documents , it denied the lawsuit’s allegation that it discriminated against pregnant patients and noted that Kaitlin consented to the test. It also said that New Jersey law mandates it to submit reports of “substance-affected infants” to the state’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The lawsuit is pending and a judge has referred it to mediation. Drug-testing labs typically report results in black and white: positive or negative. But a little-known fact about the industry is that those results are often based on standards that are wholly discretionary. For example, nearly all states use a threshold of 0.08% blood alcohol content to decide if a motorist is intoxicated. But for other drugs detected in urine, saliva and hair, cutoff levels vary from test to test and lab to lab — including Kaitlin’s test for opiates. There’s no consensus among labs on what level should confirm the presence of codeine in urine, said Larry Broussard, a toxicologist who wrote an academic journal article on “growing evidence” that poppy seeds in bagels and muffins provoke positive test results. (Kaitlin ate a bagel shortly before taking her drug test, according to court documents.) There’s more consensus for some other drugs, but labs still disagree on appropriate cutoff levels for common drugs such as THC (the compound in marijuana that creates a high) and meth, said Broussard. A Hospital Said Kaitlin Tested Positive for Codeine, But the Military Would Have Said the Test Was Negative Even at Levels 200 Times as High Note: Ng/ml is nanograms per milliliter. Cutoffs are the level at which each organization considers the presence of codeine in urine to be confirmed by mass spectrometry (gas or liquid chromatography). In 2022, the same year Kaitlin tested positive for codeine, the Department of Defense noticed a surge in personnel on military bases blaming positive tests on poppy seeds. Scientists at the military’s labs concluded that a change in the manufacturing process of some poppy seeds had led to contamination, causing service members to be falsely accused of abusing drugs. So far, 62 positive tests for codeine have been “overturned and adjusted in Army records,” an Army spokesperson told ProPublica. In response, the Department of Defense in March 2024 doubled the military’s cutoff level for codeine tests to avoid false positives triggered by poppy seed muffins, bagels and other foods. Service members are now cleared for duty with up to 400 times more codeine in their urine than is used to justify child welfare investigations in some states, ProPublica found. ProPublica reviewed cutoff levels used to confirm the presence of common drugs, including opiates, meth, THC and cocaine, as cited in court records, labs’ contracts with government agencies and scientific journals, as well as in interviews with toxicologists. We found that the cutoff levels used by the child welfare systems vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. One large state agency, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, contractually required a lab to use levels that it later acknowledged were “scientifically unsupportable.”  Ted Simon, an expert toxicology witness and a board member of the nonprofit Center for Truth in Science, which advocates for objectivity in research, said agencies are better off consulting with labs to set cutoff levels. That’s because “some labs do validation testing to ensure the accuracy of their cutoffs based on knowledge of human biology.” But even when labs set levels, they don’t always get them right. Some labs “just use the sensitivity of the chemical analysis to measure vanishingly tiny concentrations with no way to assess the relevance to humans,” Simon said. This can result in situations like Kaitlin’s, where the hospital’s cutoff was near the lower limit of what sophisticated lab instruments can detect, he said after reviewing her case. Meanwhile, “labs tell their clients what they want to hear and are hesitant to disclose the uncertainty inherent in their methods,” Simon said. There’s no industry consensus on what, or if anything, should be done about the differing standards. Some experts see a need for uniform levels but acknowledge it would require lengthy vetting before toxicologists and other stakeholders agree on what’s appropriate. Others maintain that as long as labs are transparent and support their decisions with research, they should continue choosing their own levels. “The labs do what works for the instruments that they have,” said Simon. Child welfare agencies employ a patchwork of drug testing standards, according to contracts and procurement documents. Some, like Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services, require labs to use high cutoff levels that protect against false positives. Other agencies’ contracts with their drug testing services do not specify cutoff levels, leaving the decision to the lab. A few large agencies require labs to use ultra-low levels, which catch more users but come with risks. Incidental exposure to a substance in the environment and over-the-counter medications can trigger positives. “The smaller the concentration that you try to detect, the more likely you are to get false positive results,” said toxicologist Paul Cary, who wrote a guide to testing for drug courts, which aim to address the addictions of people accused of drug-related crimes and avoid incarceration. Some Child Welfare Agencies’ Thresholds for a Positive Drug Test Are Lower Than the Federal Government’s The levels at which various agencies consider a drug test positive for meth vary widely. “The smaller the concentration that you try to detect, the more likely you are to get false positive results,” said toxicologist Paul Cary. Note: Ng/ml is nanograms per milliliter. Squares show the level at which each organization considers the presence of meth in urine to be confirmed by mass spectrometry (liquid or gas chromatography). The federal government sets standards for drug testing 14 million people. These include public-sector employees as well as workers whose performance affects the safety of others, known as safety-sensitive roles, like airline pilots, truck drivers and those working in nuclear facilities. For decades, the program was known for a rigorous scientific review and inspection process to ensure accuracy.  In 2025, President Donald Trump’s second administration overhauled the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency responsible for the testing standards program, and dismissed half of its staff . It also disbanded the expert panel that proposed scientifically valid cutoff levels, the Drug Testing Advisory Board. “There could be issues for national security or safety sensitive issues that might be impacted given the recent changes,” said Hyden Shen, former regulatory and policy oversight lead at the health agency’s division of workplace programs. In the spring, Shen resigned alongside almost half of his division. He spoke to ProPublica after leaving federal employment. Private labs have long been free to set their own standards, independent of the federal government’s recommended levels. The CEO of a laboratory company specializing in testing for probation departments, child welfare agencies and courts testified in a lawsuit that in 2018 the lab had lowered cutoff levels for cocaine in hair follicle tests by a factor of five without amending its contract with the state child welfare agency. The company said that the change was to align its levels with scientific updates and that state agencies were made aware of the new cutoffs when it reported test results. The lawsuit was settled with the lab denying wrongdoing. Federal workers who test positive for drugs can’t be punished until their results are scrutinized by medical review officers, physicians who verify that positive drug test results aren’t being triggered by legitimate medications. (For example, without a special follow-up called an isomer test, over-the-counter Vicks VapoInhaler is indistinguishable from street drugs in multiple types of drug tests.) But medical review of test results is expensive, and few state agencies require it for child welfare cases or for testing people on probation. One lab competing for a contract to test probationers and juveniles in a residential facility in Kansas discouraged the use of medical review officers, saying it would “result in extra expense and extra time for results delivery.” Other state agencies, especially those that oversee parole, probation or prisons, skip confirmation testing entirely and rely instead on cheaper, less accurate immunoassay tests, unless someone contests their result and can afford to pay out of pocket for a follow-up, according to contracts between state courts and labs.  Agencies “are effectively saying, ‘Most of these people probably did use drugs. And, yeah, OK, there’s a handful that didn’t. But it would bankrupt us to have to confirm all of these,’” said Karen Murtagh, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, which has represented inmates in drug testing cases. Marie Herrera at the park where she used to take her children to play Liz Moughon/ProPublica In the spring of 2019, Marie Herrera was working to reunite with her four kids in Michigan’s foster care system. (ProPublica is referring to Herrera by her middle name at her request, to maintain her privacy as she moves forward with her life.) At a hearing on her case, a foster care worker testified that it was going well, according to a filing from her attorney: “Mother had attended all eleven parenting times, had procured employment, was in therapy, lived in three-quarters housing, and tested negative for illegal drugs during the current reporting period.” Then that July, Herrera’s saliva tested positive for cocaine. Herrera admitted to being in recovery from an addiction but denied using the drug. Over the next eight months, two more of her drug tests were confirmed positive for cocaine by the state’s lab. She sought testing from an outside lab, which didn’t detect illegal drug use. According to her test results from the state’s lab, which Herrera shared with ProPublica, the levels of cocaine and its metabolite in her system ranged from 1.065 to 1.774 ng/ml, just above the state’s cutoff of 1 ng/ml in saliva. If the positive-test threshold for federal workers had been applied to Herrera’s tests, she could have had more than four times as much of the drug in her saliva and still been cleared to fly a plane. But Herrera’s positive test from December 2019 caused the judge to take away her unsupervised parenting time, according to court records. “The positive drug tests turned my world upside down and ruined my life,” said Herrera. What she didn’t know is that behind the scenes, Michigan’s child welfare agency was reviewing — and preparing to raise — its cutoff levels. Herrera Tested Positive for Cocaine Under Michigan’s 2019 Standard, but in 2020 the Same Test Would Have Been Ruled a Negative Herrera lost unsupervised parenting privileges after the positive test. Note: Cutoffs are the level at which each organization considers the presence of cocaine in saliva to be confirmed by mass spectrometry (gas or liquid chromatography). Ng/ml is nanograms per milliliter. Michigan’s levels for cocaine and other drugs in saliva had been set by its drug testing vendor, Forensic Fluids, in 2018, according to public records. (Forensic Fluids did not respond to a request for comment.) Michigan contractually required the same levels when it signed with a new lab, Averhealth, in 2019.  But the child welfare agency noticed conflicting results between its tests and those ordered by law enforcement agencies, according to public records . Some individuals who tested positive for a drug with one agency tested negative with another. In November 2020, at the urging of its new lab, the agency raised its levels. Communications between the agency and Averhealth show both were concerned that low cutoffs might not be “forensically defensible” due to “uncertainty around environmental exposure.” “Current levels … are scientifically unsupportable,” Michigan’s child welfare agency wrote in a memo about the change. A 2020 memo from Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services to its Children’s Services Agency recommends raising agency drug testing levels because current levels are “scientifically unsupportable.” Obtained by ProPublica. Highlight added by ProPublica. In a statement, Averhealth, the lab that processed Herrera’s tests, said the mismatch in results  that concerned Michigan administrators “in no way calls into question the accuracy or reliability” of its testing. “Inconsistencies occurred when different types of tests were conducted (saliva or hair) or when the individual was tested days later,” the company said, noting that “different types of testing have different limitations.” The company said its test results “simply attest to whether a drug is present in a specimen and, if so, in what quantity. It is left to the courts to decide what, if any consequences, follow.” In Herrera’s case, the lab said, low-level cocaine positives “likely represent ingestion of cocaine” and that “passive exposure as an explanation is highly doubtful.” The company also pointed out that Herrera had several high-level positive tests for methamphetamine in the fall of 2020, nine months after the court took away her unsupervised parenting time.  Herrera admits she’s relapsed at times. But she also says that being labeled a cocaine user early on in her case, when she says she wasn’t using, derailed her recovery. Herrera believes it set her up to fail by creating an adversarial relationship with her caseworker and judge. “I wasn’t grateful about what they were doing to me,” she says. Herrera’s parental rights were terminated in 2021, less than a year after Michigan raised its cutoff levels for cocaine in saliva. In denying Herrera’s appeal, a judge cited her refusal to participate in further drug tests, additional failed tests when she did comply, and her lack of housing and income, among other things. When Herrera was told she could never again see her kids, she said, she was devastated and relapsed again. “Fuck it, if they say I’m an addict, then I’ll numb the pain.” “I think about my kids every single day,” she said. “It’s affected me completely.” Even after raising its cutoffs, Michigan’s levels were still far lower than those used for federal workers. The state declined to comment, but a memo stated that officials considered the federal levels inappropriate because they “do not assess the impacts of how those substances may affect a person’s behavior” or “how that use may impact child safety.” Drug testing policy experts say it’s not possible for any test, no matter the cutoff level, to reliably predict child safety. “A drug test doesn’t tell you if a person has a substance use disorder, if they are in recovery, or whether a child is safe,” said Nancy K. Young, executive director of Children and Family Futures, which consults for child welfare agencies, and co-author of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration policy paper on drug testing for child welfare agencies. Young said administrators should consider test results as “just one data point” and rely more on “casework and a relationship with the family” to determine whether a child is safe and well. Graphics Notes For codeine, meth and cocaine graphics, the cutoff for federal workers is from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs. Codeine Graphic: Kaitlin was tested at Virtua Voorhees Hospital in New Jersey. Source for the Department of Defense cutoff is an agency press release, and sources for test results and hospital cutoff are court records. Meth Graphic: Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services data is from the agency’s 2023 invitation for bids. Orange County Social Services Agency data is from the agency’s 2021-2024 contract with its drug testing provider. Utah Division of Child and Family Services data is taken from an individual’s drug test results from 2022. Georgia Division of Family and Children Services data is from an individual’s drug test results from 2020.  Cocaine Graphic: Cutoffs are the level at which each organization considers the presence of cocaine in saliva to be confirmed by mass spectrometry (gas or liquid chromatography). Ng/ml is nanograms per milliliter. The cocaine cutoff levels used by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for testing in saliva are drawn from public records, including contracts, communications between the agency and its labs, and agency employee emails obtained via a public records request.  Marie Herrera provided ProPublica with her test results. The post Her Parenting Time Was Restricted After a Positive Drug Test. By Federal Standards, It Would’ve Been Negative. appeared first on ProPublica .

What happened: Judge Jennifer Green, who oversees the Maricopa Superior Court’s criminal department, has quietly rolled out a program to facilitate quicker resolutions to death penalty cases in Arizona’s most-populous county. The court has begun issuing orders for the prosecution and defense to participate in settlement conferences two years after a notice to seek the death penalty is filed, according to a statement from the court. The orders are meant to “encourage” settlement talks in capital cases, which often drag on for many years only to end with prosecutors reducing the charges. Court officials said current and retired judges will conduct the hearings.  Why it’s happening: An investigation by ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona in June found that prosecutors in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office have frequently pursued the death penalty but rarely secured death sentences. In nearly 350 such cases over 20 years, just 13% ended in a death sentence. The outcomes raised questions about the office’s judgment in pursuing the death penalty, said former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who called for a review of capital charging decisions after the news organizations shared their findings with him. “Once you allege death, the whole game changes,” Romley told ProPublica and ABC15 at the time. “So many more resources go into that particular case.”  Capital cases can be litigated across the terms of multiple county attorneys and cost more than a million dollars each to prosecute. In the hundreds of Maricopa County death penalty cases pursued since 2007, the cost of furnishing the accused with an adequate defense alone has totaled $289 million. That figure did not include the costs of the prosecution, which the county attorney’s office said are not recorded in a way that can be tracked separately. Romley applauded the court for implementing the settlement conferences. “The courts have recognized this isn’t the right way to be doing this,” he said, adding that the orders could speed up other aspects of the cases, such as discovery. Victims could also benefit from quicker resolution, he said. “If I was county attorney, I would be embracing it,” he said. Arizona resumed executions in 2025 after a two-year pause. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in 2022 ordered a review of the state’s lethal injection process, but she dismissed the retired federal magistrate judge she had appointed to conduct the analysis after he determined that lethal injection is not humane , he said. There are 107 people on Arizona’s death row .  What people are saying: Rosemarie Peña-Lynch, director of public defense services for Maricopa County, said in a statement that public defenders are committed to a process that “offers an opportunity to explore potential case resolutions while safeguarding the constitutional rights of our clients.” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, said at a news conference in November that she is “for anything that would speed up this process.” But, she added, prosecutors seek death in cases “where we think the death penalty is warranted.” Asked about holding settlement conferences two years into such cases, she said: “It’s not typically a situation where the death penalty is dropped … on a whim of a plea agreement. It’s dropped because maybe evidence changes, or, for example, witnesses die, or something like that. Whether it will help or not, I don’t know, but if it does that’s great.” What’s next: Last month, Green issued an order in a death penalty case to schedule a settlement hearing within two years. Green’s order, in a case against two men accused of murdering a Tempe woman, cites a criminal procedure rule mandating capital cases be resolved within 24 months of the state’s notice to seek death. On Dec. 3, Mitchell announced that her office would seek the death penalty against  Cudjoe Young and Sencere Hayes, who were previously charged with the April 17, 2023, murder of 22-year-old Mercedes Vega. Young and Hayes have pleaded not guilty.  An autopsy report showed Vega, who was still alive when she was left in a burning Chevrolet Malibu, died of blunt force injuries and had been shot in the arm. A medical examiner also found bleach in her throat, according to ABC15 . “We will continue to pursue justice for Mercedes Vega and her family,” Mitchell said in a statement . Read the Investigation Arizona’s Largest County Frequently Pursues the Death Penalty. It Rarely Secures That Sentence. The post Arizona Judges Launch Effort Seeking Quicker Resolutions to Death Penalty Cases appeared first on ProPublica .

President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon’s cloud computing systems. The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department’s computer systems for nearly a decade — a practice that left some of the country’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary. U.S.-based supervisors, known as “digital escorts,” were supposed to serve as a check on these foreign employees, but we found they often lacked the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. In the wake of the reporting, leading members of Congress called on the Defense Department to strengthen its security requirements while blasting Microsoft for what some Republicans called “a national betrayal.” Cybersecurity and intelligence experts have told ProPublica that the arrangement posed major risks to national security, given that laws in China grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data. Microsoft pledged in July to stop using China-based engineers to service Pentagon cloud systems after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly condemned the practice. “Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems,” Hegseth wrote on X . In September, the Pentagon updated its cybersecurity requirements for tech contractors, banning IT vendors from using China-based personnel to work on Defense Department computer systems. The new law effectively codifies that change, requiring Hegseth to prohibit individuals from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from having direct or indirect access to Defense Department cloud computing systems. Microsoft declined to comment on the new law. Following the earlier changes, a spokesperson said the company would “work with our national security partners to evaluate and adjust our security protocols in light of the new directives.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican who serves on the House Armed Service Committee, celebrated the development, saying it “closes contractor loopholes … following the discovery that companies like Microsoft exploited” them. Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who has been critical of the tech giant, also heralded the legislation , saying it “includes much-needed efforts to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure, which is threatened by Communist China and other foreign adversaries.” The legislation also bolsters congressional oversight of the Pentagon’s cybersecurity practices, mandating that the secretary brief the congressional defense committees on the changes no later than June 1, 2026. After that, such briefings will take place annually for the next three years, including updates on the “effectiveness of controls, security incidents, and recommendations for legislative or administrative action.” Read More A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers As ProPublica reported, Microsoft initially developed the digital escort program as a work-around to a Defense Department requirement that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The company has maintained that it disclosed the program to the Pentagon and that escorts were provided “specific training on protecting sensitive data” and preventing harm. But top Pentagon officials have said they were unaware of Microsoft’s program until ProPublica’s reporting. A copy of the security plan that the company submitted to the Defense Department in 2025 showed Microsoft left out key details of the escort program, making no reference to its China-based operations or foreign engineers at all. This summer, Hegseth announced that the department had opened an investigation into whether any of Microsoft’s China-based engineers had compromised national security. He also ordered a new third-party audit of the company’s digital-escort program. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on the status of those inquiries. The post Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work appeared first on ProPublica .

A few months ago, Oregon’s green energy outlook was bleak. The state Legislature and Gov. Tina Kotek had repeatedly failed to address a huge obstacle that has held back wind and solar projects in the Northwest for years: aging electrical lines too jammed up to handle more renewable power. A series of articles by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica identified barriers in the federal and state bureaucracies that delayed improvements to beef up the grid. The failure to complete upgrades is the main reason Oregon, like its fellow progressive state and neighbor Washington, has lagged most of the nation in the growth of clean energy despite an internal mandate to go green. Bills to tackle the transmission problem continued to languish and die in the Oregon Legislature as recently as this spring. But there has been a groundswell of urgency since the stories were published. Kotek, a Democrat, has now issued two executive orders mandating that state agencies speed up renewable energy development by any available means, including fast-tracking permits and directly paying for new transmission lines. Those efforts could eventually be backed up by money. The state’s energy department, in a first, recommended lawmakers consider creating a state entity to finance, plan and build transmission lines. A lawmaker whose bill to create such an authority failed this year suddenly has hope for getting it done, and he said the governor’s office is working with him to make it happen. What was essentially an unacknowledged problem among many Oregon policymakers now has the full attention of the governor and the key agencies that report to her. There has been new attention on electrical transmission in Washington state, as well. The shift comes as President Donald Trump has created new obstacles to ramping up renewable energy. This year, he removed tax credits that made wind and solar cheaper to build, blocked new wind permits and fired employees of the federal agency that reviews them. This was the year “where you’ve seen all these factors coming together — we know that our outdated grid is choking our ability to grow across the state, and we’re already paying more for electricity,” Kotek said in an interview last week. Kotek acknowledged the role of OPB and ProPublica’s reporting when asked what prompted the changes. “You’ve been doing some great stories,” she said. In May, OPB and ProPublica showed that the state ranked 47th in renewable energy growth over the past decade. Washington is 50th. An analysis by the news organizations found that Northwest wind and solar farms face the longest odds in the country for successfully connecting to the power grid, under a process heavily controlled by the Bonneville Power Administration. The federal agency’s transmission lines and substations constitute 75% of the region’s electrical network. Out of 469 large renewables projects that have sought access to Bonneville’s system since 2015, only one was successful. Backers of the other projects either abandoned their requests or were still waiting on studies and necessary upgrades to power lines and substations. Northwest utilities fear rolling blackouts within the decade unless transmission capacity is expanded to meet surging energy demand, particularly from data centers that support artificial intelligence. Kotek said she hadn’t seen the numbers on Oregon’s stagnant renewable energy growth before OPB and ProPublica reported them. “I hope — and we will be planning — to make our numbers look better and better in the coming years,” she said. In 2021, when lawmakers enacted Oregon’s plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in electrical generation by 2040, they failed to account for transmission and the glacial pace set by Bonneville for improvements. (The agency has said previously its project approval decisions are guided by financial prudence.) Oregon leaders also did not address the state’s slow process for evaluating energy projects, with appeals that can prolong permit decisions on new power lines or wind and solar farms for years. The rules originated with the 1970s antinuclear movement. Foes say rural transmission and wind projects blight the landscape, and they have used the permitting system as a means of delay. Bills to smooth out the state permitting process, even those supported by rural interests, went nowhere. Efforts to bypass Bonneville also withered. Advocates proposed a state financing authority for new transmission lines and substations as recently as this year. The legislation, which lacked the endorsement of either Kotek or the Oregon Department of Energy, died. Emily Moore, director of climate and energy for the Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, called OPB and ProPublica’s reporting “invaluable” in prompting change. “It has motivated policymakers and advocates alike to try to find solutions to get Oregon and Washington unstuck and is recruiting new people to the effort,” Moore said. Kotek’s latest executive order calls for a wide array of state agencies to recommend ways to overcome obstacles to clean energy development. This followed her October order for state agencies to take “any and all steps necessary” to fast-track solar and wind permits. Separately, the energy department recommended lawmakers look into creating a new entity like state authorities in Colorado and New Mexico, which plan transmission routes, partner with transmission developers and issue bonds to finance construction. The agency’s strategic plan, finalized in November, said the state must streamline clean energy development and take a more active role in getting regional transmission lines built. Similar findings emerged in a Dec. 1 report by a state working group created by Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, which called for a dedicated state entity focused on increasing transmission capacity. The authors cited OPB and ProPublica’s 2025 coverage in stating that Washington is falling behind on infrastructure needed to hit its green energy goals. (Ferguson requested the report following reporting by The Seattle Times and ProPublica last year on the energy consumed by data centers , which receive generous state tax breaks. ) “This would be something that could potentially really help move the needle,” said Joni Sliger, a senior policy analyst with the Oregon energy department. The governor has also ordered the department and Oregon utilities regulators to designate physical paths through the state in which permitting for transmission lines can be streamlined and to gather financial support for projects that serve the public interest. A proposed Eastern Oregon transmission line was stuck in the permitting process for nearly two decades. The line is expected to run through this stretch of La Grande, Oregon. Steve Lenz for ProPublica Kotek cited the Boardman to Hemingway transmission line in Eastern Oregon that got caught in permitting limbo for nearly 20 years , an episode highlighted in OPB and ProPublica’s reporting. The governor called the state’s handling of the project a “red flag.” “We have to get out of our own way,” she said. Kotek’s executive orders drew praise from a range of organizations who appeared with the governor when she announced her most recent moves in November. “It makes our energy system stronger and more reliable, enhancing grid resilience, expanding storage and bolstering transmission to keep electricity affordable and dependable for every Oregonian,” Nora Apter, Oregon director for the clean energy advocacy group Climate Solutions, said at the time. The head of Oregon Business for Climate, which represents interests including real estate developers, wineries and coffee roasters, also spoke at the event. Tim Miller, the group’s director, said that although Oregon has put in place an energy permitting system to ensure siting is done right, Kotek’s order “reminds the state that we also have to get things done.” Lawmakers now are working on a plan to enact a state transmission financing authority during the next full legislative session, in early 2027. Rep. Mark Gamba, the Portland-area Democrat whose effort to create such an agency last year failed, said the governor’s office is in discussions with him about the new legislation and that he expects it to pass thanks to her involvement. “Her leaning in the way she has is what we needed,” he said. Gamba said he’s seeing newfound support for expanding transmission from across the political spectrum. “I’ve gotten calls from interests that typically I’m on the other side of the fight with,” Gamba said, “because they recognize that this is an economic development issue as well.” The post Oregon Faced a Huge Obstacle in Adding Green Energy. Here’s What Changed This Year. appeared first on ProPublica .

Over the past year, ProPublica has published hundreds of investigations.  In January, Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News examined why a sexual assault case took seven years to go to trial in Alaska. In March, our video journalists told the stories of three mothers fighting to address America’s stillbirth crisis . In August, a team across the newsroom calculated how deeply President Donald Trump’s administration cut federal health agencies . And in December, Megan Rose and Debbie Cenziper reported how the Food and Drug Administration’s lax generic drug rules put a lung transplant patient’s life at risk . Here are 25 long-reads to add to your end-of-year reading list. You can also explore our most-read stories of the year . 1. Anchorage Police Say They Witnessed a Sexual Assault in Public. It Took Seven Years for the Case to Go to Trial. By Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News. Co-published with Anchorage Daily News . Published Jan. 7. In Alaska, where the time to resolve most serious felony cases has nearly tripled over the past decade, one case was delayed so long that both victims died. A former prosecutor called it “a travesty of justice.” 2. Dozens of People Died in Arizona Sober Living Homes as State Officials Fumbled Medicaid Fraud Response By Mary Hudetz, ProPublica, and Hannah Bassett, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Co-published with Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting . Published Jan. 27. Arizona officials acknowledged that a fraud scheme targeting Indigenous people with addictions cost taxpayers $2.5 billion. But they haven’t accounted publicly for the number of deaths tied to the scheme. 3. What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing By Robin Fields Published Feb. 12. Video by Jose Sepulveda/ProPublica Taxpayers and charities helped develop Zolgensma. Then it debuted at a record price, ushering in a new class of wildly expensive drugs. Its story upends the widely held conception that high prices reflect huge industry investments in innovation. 4. How a Global Online Network of White Supremacists Groomed a Teen to Kill By A.C. Thompson and James Bandler, ProPublica, and Lukáš Diko, Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak. Co-published with FRONTLINE .  Published March 8.  The murders of two people outside an LGBTQ+ bar at first looked like the act of a lone shooter. A ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation shows they were, in fact, the culmination of a coordinated, international recruiting effort by online extremists. 5. Before a Breath: America’s Stillbirth Crisis By Nadia Sussman, Liz Moughon, Margaret Cheatham Williams and Lisa Riordan Seville  Published March 20. Video by ProPublica More than 20,000 stillbirths occur in the U.S. each year, but 1 in 4 may be preventable. “Before a Breath” sheds light on three mothers fighting to change those statistics. 6. “A Wholly Inaccurate Picture”: Reality Cop Show “The First 48” and the Wrongly Convicted Man by Jessica Lussenhop, photography by Sarahbeth Maney Published March 29. Video by Jose Sepulveda/ProPublica Edgar Barrientos-Quintana spent 16 years behind bars wrongly convicted for a shooting featured on “The First 48.” The Minnesota attorney general’s office effectively alleged that the show shaped the case instead of the case shaping the show. 7. An Algorithm Deemed This Nearly Blind 70-Year-Old Prisoner a “Moderate Risk.” Now He’s No Longer Eligible for Parole. By Richard A. Webster, Verite News. Co-published with Verite News .  Published April 10. A Louisiana law cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that bars thousands of prisoners from a shot at early release. Civil rights attorneys say it could disproportionately harm Black people — and may even be unconstitutional. 8. How a Chinese Prison Helped Fuel a Deadly Drug Crisis in the United States By Sebastian Rotella Published April 23. While China enforces strict laws against domestic drug trafficking, state-supported companies have openly shipped fentanyl to the U.S., investigators say. One prison-owned chemical company boasted online: “100% of our shipments will clear customs.” 9. Nike Says Its Factory Workers Earn Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. At This Cambodian Factory, 1% Made That Much. By Rob Davis, photography by Sarahbeth Maney. Co-published with The Oregonian/OregonLive . Published April 25. Nike has made an expansive effort to convince consumers, investors and others that it is improving the lives of factory workers who make its products, not exploiting them. A rare view of wages at one Cambodian factory tests this claim. 10. Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA’s Gamble on America’s Drugs By Debbie Cenziper, Megan Rose, Brandon Roberts and Irena Hwang Published June 17. A ProPublica investigation found that for more than a decade, the FDA gave substandard factories banned from the United States a special pass to keep sending drugs to an unsuspecting public. 11. He Was Accused of Killing His Wife. Idaho’s Coroner System Let Clues Vanish After a Previous Wife’s Death. By Audrey Dutton  Published July 16. Video by Jose Sepulveda/ProPublica Clayton Strong had a history of domestic unrest in two marriages. The women’s families say a more thorough investigation of Betty Strong’s death in Idaho might have saved the life of his next wife, Shirley Weatherley, in Texas. 12. He Came to the U.S. to Support His Sick Child. He Was Detained. Then He Disappeared. By Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica; Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune; Mica Rosenberg and Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica; Ronna Rísquez, Alianza Rebelde Investiga; and Adrián González, Cazadores de Fake News. Co-published with Alianza Rebelde Investiga, Cazadores de Fake News and The Texas Tribune .  Published July 18.  Like most of the more than 230 Venezuelan men deported to a Salvadoran prison, José Manuel Ramos Bastidas had followed U.S. immigration rules. Then Trump rewrote them. 13. The Drying Planet By Abrahm Lustgarten, graphics by Lucas Waldron, illustrations by Olivier Kugler for ProPublica  Published July 25.  A new study finds that freshwater resources are rapidly disappearing, creating arid “mega” regions and causing sea levels to rise. 14. Middle School Cheerleaders Made a TikTok Video Portraying a School Shooting. They Were Charged With a Crime. By Aliyya Swaby. Co-published with WPLN .  Published July 28.  Social videos, memes and retweets are becoming fodder for criminal charges in an era of heightened responses to student threats. Authorities say harsh punishment is necessary, but experts say the crackdown has unintended consequences. 15. “We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out” By Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk Published July 31. We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “minimum amount of force.” You can judge for yourself. 16. Gutted: How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies By Brandon Roberts, Annie Waldman and Pratheek Rebala, illustrations by Sam Green for ProPublica Published Aug. 21. More than ‎20,500 workers have left or been pushed out of federal health agencies, a ProPublica analysis found. Staffers say the cuts will leave their agencies less equipped to conduct studies, perform inspections and combat deadly outbreaks. 17. “Material Support” and an Ohio Chaplain: How 9/11-Era Terror Rules Could Empower Trump’s Immigration Crackdown By Hannah Allam Published Sept. 9. The U.S. government was trying to deport Ohio children’s hospital chaplain Ayman Soliman, alleging tenuous connections to terrorism. If DHS had succeeded, experts say it could have handed the Trump administration a “sledgehammer” to use on mass deportations. A few weeks after this investigation was published, Soliman was freed . 18. “Just Let Me Die” By Duaa Eldeib, photography by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica  Published Sept. 10.  After insurance repeatedly denied a couple’s claims, one psychiatrist was their last hope. 19. These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department. By Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards Published Oct. 8. Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of public schools as we know them. 20. How Paul Newby Made North Carolina a Blueprint for Conservative Courts By Doug Bock Clark Published Oct. 30. Paul Newby, a born-again Christian, has turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power. Over two decades, he’s driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state. 21. She Begged for Help. This State’s Probation Gap May Have Put Her in Danger. By Paige Pfleger, WPLN, and Mariam Elba, ProPublica. Co-published with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism , Tennessee Lookout and WPLN . Published Nov. 11.  Tennessee probation officers pause in-person visits and home searches for offenders facing an arrest warrant. That reduced supervision can last for months. Temptress Peebles was one of six mothers who died during this gap.  22. What the U.S. Government Is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic By Nat Lash, graphics by Chris Alcantara Published Nov. 18.  Egg producers suspect bird flu is traveling through the air. After a disastrous Midwestern outbreak early this year, we tested that theory and found that where the wind blew, the virus followed. Vaccines could help, but the USDA hasn’t approved them. Read More The Most-Read ProPublica Stories of 2025 23. Under Trump, More Than 1,000 Nonprofits Strip DEI Language From Tax Forms By Ellis Simani, design by Zisiga Mukulu Published Dec. 17. As the Trump administration ordered agencies to eradicate “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we identified more than 1,000 nonprofits that removed such language from the mission statements in their tax filings. 24. Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis By Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, photography by Brian Otieno for ProPublica Published Dec. 17. “Brutal and traumatizing”: Interviews and a trove of internal documents show government officials and aid workers desperately tried to warn Trump advisers about impending disaster and death. 25. Fighting for Breath By Megan Rose and Debbie Cenziper, photography by Hannah Yoon for ProPublica Published Dec. 19. Lung transplant patient Hannah Goetz’s life depended on the generic version of a critical drug. It was supposed to be equivalent to the brand-name medication — but the FDA doesn’t always ensure that’s the case. The post 25 Investigations You May Have Missed This Year appeared first on ProPublica .

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, ProPublica’s reporters set out to cover how his second administration would reshape the government and the country. Our reporters detailed what happened when the Department of Government Efficiency , initially led by Elon Musk, slashed federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Social Security Administration . We wrote about the people caught up in the administration’s immigration crackdown, including the more than 170 U.S. citizens who had been detained by immigration agents. We profiled key figures in the administration, including the 22-year-old picked to lead terrorism prevention and the man who has been described as Trump’s shadow president .  Our newsroom also focused beyond the White House. Ginger Thompson wrote a five-part series, with research by Doris Burke, that told the story of American health care through the only hospital in Albany, Georgia . Ellis Simani and Lexi Churchill uncovered a Texas charter school superintendent who makes $870,000 . And David Armstrong sought to understand why a single pill of his cancer drug cost the same as a new iPhone . Those were all among the investigations that readers spent the most time with this year. In the new year, ProPublica will keep reporting on these storylines — and new ones.  In the meantime, revisit our most-read stories of 2025, as measured by the total amount of time spent reading them across several of our publishing platforms. 1. The Militia and the Mole By Joshua Kaplan Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter. 2. Sick in a Hospital Town By Ginger Thompson, with research by Doris Burke Why were the people in Albany, Georgia, so sick, when the town’s most powerful institution was a hospital? 3. Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” By McKenzie Funk Current and former flight attendants for GlobalX, the private charter airline at the center of Trump’s immigration crackdown, expressed concern about their inability to treat passengers humanely and to keep them safe. 4. The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security By Eli Hager  DOGE has ignored urgently needed reforms and upgrades at the Social Security Administration, according to dozens of insiders and 15 hours of candid interviews with the former acting chief of the agency, who admits he sometimes made things worse. 5. Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal By Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing he called “deceitful and potentially criminal.” 6. Getting “DOGED”: DOGE Targeted Him on Social Media. Then the Taliban Took His Family. By Avi Asher-Schapiro and Christopher Bing Afghan scholar Mohammad Halimi, who fled the Taliban in 2021, had worked to help U.S. diplomats understand his homeland. Then DOGE put his family’s lives at risk by exposing his sensitive work for a U.S.-funded nonprofit. 7. “The Intern in Charge”: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention By Hannah Allam One year out of college and with no apparent national security expertise, Thomas Fugate is the Department of Homeland Security official tasked with overseeing the government’s main hub for combating violent extremism. 8. The Price of Remission By David Armstrong When Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer, he set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. He has covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What he discovered shocked him. 9. “Incalculable” Damage: How a “We Buy Ugly Houses” Franchise Left a Trail of Financial Wreckage Across Texas By Anjeanette Damon and Mollie Simon Charles Carrier is accused of orchestrating a yearslong Ponzi scheme, bilking tens of millions of dollars from both wealthy investors and older people with modest incomes. Despite signs of trouble, the houseflipping chain HomeVestors of America didn’t step in. 10. The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation By Robert Faturechi and Avi Asher-Schapiro Federal authorities were chided for seizing electronic devices from Tate and his brother, and told to return them, records and interviews show. Experts said the intervention was highly inappropriate. 11. This County Was the “Model” for Local Police Carrying Out Immigration Raids. It Ended in Civil Rights Violations. By Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria. Co-published with Arizona Luminaria . Under Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County was one of the first testing grounds for ICE’s 287(g) program, which lets local police enforce immigration laws. Many Arizonans say those abuses parallel what’s playing out now under Trump. 12. The H-2A Visa Trap By Max Blau, ProPublica, and Zaydee Sanchez, for ProPublica, with illustrations by Dadu Shin for ProPublica Sofi left behind her child in Mexico for the promise of providing him a better life. She ended up a victim of an operation that is alleged to have exploited the H-2A visa program — and the workers it brought to America. 13. “Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas. By Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser, photography by Lexi Parra for ProPublica ProPublica has found multiple cases of women with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions. Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old mother, was told by doctors there was no emergency before preeclampsia killed her. 14. To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class By Robert Faturechi and Justin Elliott A menu of options being circulated by congressional Republicans also includes new tax cuts for corporations and the ultrawealthy. 15. Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations By Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirements, experts say. 16. We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. By Nicole Foy, photography by Sarahbeth Maney The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer. 17. Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy, photography by Peter DiCampo Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a result. 18. “The President Wanted It and I Did It”: Recording Reveals Head of Social Security’s Thoughts on DOGE and Trump By Eli Hager In a recording obtained by ProPublica, acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek portrayed his agency as facing peril, while also encouraging patience with “the DOGE kids.” 19. This Charter School Superintendent Makes $870,000. He Leads a District With 1,000 Students. By Ellis Simani, ProPublica, and Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Co-published with The Texas Tribune . On paper, Salvador Cavazos earns less than $300,000 to run Valere Public Schools, a small Texas charter network. But taxpayers likely aren’t aware that in reality, his total pay makes him one of the country’s highest-earning superintendents. Read More 25 Investigations You May Have Missed This Year 20. What You Should Know About Russ Vought, Trump’s Shadow President By Andy Kroll Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies. Here are some key things to know about the D.C. insider who wants to take a hatchet to the federal government. 21. “Slow Pay, Low Pay or No Pay” By T. Christian Miller Blue Cross authorized mastectomies and breast reconstructions for women with cancer but refused to pay the full doctors’ bills. A jury called it fraud and awarded the practice $421 million. 22. “We’re Broken”: As Federal Prisons Run Low on Food and Toilet Paper, Corrections Officers Are Leaving in Droves for ICE By Keri Blakinger Many of the problems the agency is facing now are not new, but staff and prisoners fear an exodus of officers could make life behind bars even worse. 23. He Spent Funds Meant for Native Hawaiians on Polo and Porsches. The Federal Government Failed to Stop Him. By Nick Grube, Honolulu Civil Beat. Co-published with Honolulu Civil Beat . A small business program allowed Christopher Dawson to win big contracts if he promised to uplift Native Hawaiians. Instead, federal prosecutors allege, he used the money to line his own pockets. 24. Young Girls Were Sexually Abused by a Church Member. They Were Told to Forgive and Forget. By Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica, and Andy Mannix, Minnesota Star Tribune, photography by Leila Navidi, Minnesota Star Tribune. Co-published with Minnesota Star Tribune .  In Minnesota, leaders of an Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community enabled a child abuser by telling his victims that once the sins were “washed away in the blood of reconciliation,” they could never speak of them again. 25. Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared. By Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Kavitha Surana ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban. The post The Most-Read ProPublica Stories of 2025 appeared first on ProPublica .